The Orion spacecraft passed just 130 kilometers above the lunar surface during a mission-critical engine burn
NASA’s Artemis 1 mission fired its engines close to the moon today , finishing the maneuver successfully out of communication with Earth.
NASA was in the dark, literally, during the burn Monday as Orion finished the burn by itself on the far side of the moon from our planet, where radio signals cannot penetrate from Earth. At its closest approach, the spacecraft skimmed just 80 miles or so above the lunar surface at 7:44 a.m. EST . Monday’s successful burn will set up another crucial maneuver on Nov. 25: an engine firing designed to insert Orion into a distant retrograde orbit around the moon. The capsule will stay in the DRO—a stable path that will take it as far as 40,000 miles from the lunar surface—until Dec. 1, when another engine burn will send the capsule back toward Earth.
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