After orbiting the moon, Orion will make its return trip, completing its journey in about 25.5 days. Orion is expected to log roughly 1.3 million miles (2 million kilometers), taking a path that will lead it farther than any other spacecraft designed for human flight has traveled, according to NASA. Then, about two hours after liftoff, the rocket engine also fell away, leaving Orion to free-fly for the remainder of its journey.Ĭommander Moonikin Campos (left) can be seen sitting inside the Orion capsule. That engine then set off two powerful burns to put the spacecraft on the correct trajectory toward the moon. The SLS rocket expended millions of pounds of fuel before parts of the rocket began breaking away, and Orion was left to soar through orbit with just one large engine. Orion is designed to carry humans, but its passengers for this test mission are of the inanimate variety, including some mannequins collecting vital data to help future live crews. Why NASA is returning to the moon 50 years later with Artemis IĪtop the rocket was the Orion spacecraft, a gumdrop-shaped capsule that broke away from the rocket after reaching space. (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP) (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images) Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images The spacecraft will remain in space for 42 days before returning to Earth. It will propel the Orion crew capsule into orbit around the Moon. Artemis 1, an uncrewed test flight, will feature the first blastoff of the massive Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which will be the most powerful in the world when it goes into operation. The ISS, about the length of a football field and the largest human-made object in space, has been continuously operated by a U.S.-Russian-led consortium that includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.NASA's Artemis I Moon rocket is rolled out to Launch Pad Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on August 16, 2022. NASA crew members, including commander Nicole Aunapu Mann, the first Native American woman to fly to space, along with three Russians and a Japanese astronaut. The Crew 6 team will be welcomed aboard the space station by seven current ISS occupants - three U.S. Rounding out the four-man Crew 6 is Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, 41, who like Alneyadi is an engineer and spaceflight rookie designated as a mission specialist for the team.įedyaev is the latest cosmonaut to fly aboard an American spacecraft under a ride-sharing deal signed in July by NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, despite heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. UAE's first-ever astronaut launched to orbit in 2019 aboard a Russian spacecraft. soil as part of a long-duration space station team. The Crew 6 mission also is notable for its inclusion of UAE astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, 41, only the second person from his country to fly to space and the first to launch from U.S. Navy submarine officer who has logged more than 40 days in orbit as a veteran of three space shuttle flights and seven spacewalks.įellow NASA astronaut Warren "Woody" Hoburg, 37, an engineer and commercial aviator designated as the Crew 6 pilot, will be making his first spaceflight. The latest ISS crew is led by mission commander Stephen Bowen, 59, a one-time U.S. Had Monday's launch been a success, it was expected to take the crew about 25 hours to reach their destination at the International Space Station (ISS), a laboratory orbiting about 250 miles (420 km) above Earth.ĭesignated Crew 6, the mission will carry the sixth long-duration ISS team that NASA has flown aboard SpaceX since Musk's California-based company began sending American astronauts to orbit in May 2020. Eleventh-hour launch scrubs are fairly routine in the highly complex and risky endeavor of human spaceflight. Neither NASA nor SpaceX immediately said how long it might actually take before they would be ready to try again. The first backup launch opportunity for the mission was set for early Tuesday, about 24 hours from the initial attempt to get the rocket off the ground.
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