Astronauts will test drive NASA’s Orion spacecraft for the first time during the agency’s Artemis II test flight next year. While many of the spacecraft’s
test flight next year. While many of the spacecraft’s maneuvers like big propulsive burns are automated, a key test called the proximity operations demonstration will evaluate the manual handling qualities of Orion.through a series of moves using the detached upper stage of the SLS rocket as a mark. The in-space propulsion stage, called the ICPS astronaut Jeremy Hansen are safely in space, the Moon rocket’s upper stage will fire twice to put Orion on a high Earth orbit trajectory.
“The crew will view the target by using a docking camera mounted inside the docking hatch window on the top of the crew module to see how well aligned they are with the docking target mounted to the ICPS,” Anderson said. About 30 feet from the stage, Orion will stop and the crew will checkout the spacecraft’s fine handling qualities to evaluate how it performs in close proximity to another spacecraft. Small maneuvers performed very close to the ICPS will be done using the reaction control system thrusters on Orion’s European Service Module.
At the end of the demonstration, Orion will perform an automated departure burn to move away from the ICPS before the stage then fires to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere over a remote location in the Pacific Ocean. During Orion’s departure burn, engineers will use the spacecraft’s docking camera to gather precise positioning measurements, which will help inform navigation during rendezvous activities on future missions in the lunar environment, where there is no GPS system.
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