On day 11 of the Artemis I mission, Orion continues its journey beyond the Moon after entering a distant retrograde orbit Friday, Nov. 25, at 3:52 p.m. CST. Orion will remain in this orbit for six days before exiting lunar orbit to put the spacecraft on a trajectory back to Earth and f a Sunday, Dec. 11, splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
Orion surpassed the distance record for a mission with a spacecraft designed to carry humans to deep space and back to Earth, at 7:42 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 26. The record was set during the Apollo 13 mission at 248,655 miles from our home planet. At its maximum distance from the Moon, Orion will be more than 270,000 miles from Earth Monday, Nov. 28.
Engineers also completed the first orbital maintenance burn by firing auxiliary thrusters on Orion’s service module at 3:52 p.m. for less than a second to propel the spacecraft at .47 feet per second. The planned orbital maintenance burns will fine-tune Orion’s trajectory as it continues its orbit around the Moon.
Flying aboard Orion on the Artemis I mission is a suited manikin named after a key player in bringing Apollo 13 safely back to Earth. Arturo Campos was an electrical engineer who developed a plan to provide the command module with enough electrical power to navigate home safely after an oxygen tank aboard the service module of the Apollo spacecraft ruptured. Commander Moonikin Campos is outfitted with sensors to provide data on what crew members may experience in flight, continuing Campos’ legacy of enabling human exploration in deep space.
Artemis builds on the experience of Apollo. With Artemis, humans will return to the lunar surface, and this time to stay. NASA will use innovate technologies to explore the Moon’s South Pole and more of the lunar surface than ever before using the Gateway space station in lunar orbit along with advanced spacesuits and rovers. NASA will lead the way in collaboration with international and commercial partners to establish the first long-term presence on the Moon. Then, we will use what we learn on and around the Moon to take the next giant leap: sending the first astronauts to Mars.
As of 1:16 p.m., Orion was 252,133 miles from Earth and 52,707 miles from the Moon, cruising at 2,013 miles per hour. You can track Orion via the Artemis Real-Time Orbit Website, or AROW.
Learn more about how Apollo builds on Artemis and how Orion is designed for human missions to deep space.
If only it was more than a souped up Apollo
Relearning lessons from the past. But I’m not going to criticize since at least they are moving in the right direction and on a course to do what NASA is supposed to be doing.
I was almost 19 when Apollo 11 flew. I’m now 67. It has taken them long enough!
If you are 67 then you were 14 when Apollo 11 flew
Musk’s company has the right idea
Well, 14 is almost 19, right?
Seems an odd error to make – given the event
Be nice to us old folks…
NADA seems to have forgotten the most important lessons from Apollo. It is too expensive and there is no logical reason to go to the moon. Don’t let me interrupt anyone’s ridiculous fantasy of colonizing the moon though.
Too expensive? As for no logical reason to go to the moon, well, you could say Columbus didn’t have much of a logical reason to sale the ocean blue in 1492. Lewis and Clark didn’t have much of a reason to explore the North American Continent. Genghis Kahn didn’t have much reason to conquer much of the world…
It gets old busting this common, juvenile argument. Profit was involved in every single one of these earth bound adventures. Nowhere in the solar system are we going to be able to blast off and visit and breathe the air, live off the land, colonize, terraform, nor any of the other ridiculous fantasies you short sighted people come up with. If a moon base is ever actually built, the people on the moon better hope that those supply rockets keep coming. Running out of food, water and oxygen cannot be much fun. They will be able to bathe in radiation if they so choose though.
How about your turn for an explanation? What do you expect to find on the moon other than rocks and dust? Who would want to live on the moon and why? What exactly are they going to be doing up there? What exactly are humans doing on the useless space station now?
For a long time, NASA’s official plans for the space station were to de-orbit it after completion; that’s how useful it was.
Everyone overlooks the expense of maintaining a moon colony. It’s not just food and water and oxygen. It’s thinking up make-work projects and dressing up cover stories about how useful they are, sending scientists and their equipment back and forth, and justifying the inevitable occasional deaths. NASA has been happy for the fake Tang and ball-point stories to make Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo seem worthwhile, and they are really good at sending pictures from the space station. Actual useful science, not so much.
Oh yes, I remember the BS used to justify the space station. Magical zero g fabrication techniques, space medicines and space crystals were just the beginning. How has that 130 billion dollar investment turned out? Exactly as you would expect from a government agency.
Solar power is effective and abundant on the lunar poles. Focused solar alone is enough to smelt metals. Iron and titanium for sure, very likely others when we’re there to look.
There is enough water on the moon for drinking, and to make oxygen and hydrogen — again using solar alone. Hydrogen and oxygen will also power local transport.
Hydroponics will eventually be possible. Only seeds, root stocks, and soil bacteria will be required. All low-mass freight for unmanned delivery.
Near Earth comets and asteroids will be captured for raw materials. The Kuiper Belt and the Oort cloud provide nearly infinite resources.
Eventually, most industry will move to near Earth space and the moon. Earth will become a garden.
When effective off-Earth transport is achieved, most people will probably move to the asteroid belt. In 100 to 500 years, I expect there to be a trillion people and very large ark-ships going off to surrounding solar systems.
The future for we humans is limitless.
The ISS had two goals: 1) keep former Soviet space and missile engineers employed, so that they wouldn’t sell their expertise to countries such as Iran; and 2) provide a channel for U.S. funds to flow into the cleanup of Soviet nuclear weapons production facilities and decommissioned missile silos. The latter isn’t widely known, though it isn’t classified. I have first-hand knowledge of that part…
It was probably worth the expenditure.
There are already people signing up to migrate to Mars. I’m sure you can find people who would want to live on the Moon.
As for economic activity, the moon has plenty of minerals that can be mined and launched, either to earth, or to orbiting colonies.
Why do you assume there is no value in colonizing the moon.
It is the perfect platform for building the space craft that will be used to carry man to the rest of the solar system.
What are the colonists going to breathe and eat in the rest of the solar system?
If the plan is to send progressives to a penal colony, then I agree, the moon would be a great place. However, it would be much cheaper to send them to Australia.
I believe Australia, as well as the rest of the world’s nations, have more than enough progressives. Better to send them to Antartica along with the UN. Hope they like penguin meat and algae.
We don’t know what resources are available in the rest of the solar system but an ice asteroid is a possible source of oxygen and organic chemicals to provide a suitable base for agriculture.
I root for an island to the west of Alaska. Somewhat between Russia and Alaska.
St. Lawrence Island is due west of Hooper Bay, approximately 400 kilometers (250 miles), looks like a good location.
If it has brown bears and polar bears, so much the better. Walrus and seals are a bonus. Progressives can count bears to keep busy.
I seriously doubt that they can remain vegan or even vegetarian. But, they’ll be welcome to try seaweed or kelp diets…
Perhaps, we should leave them a surplus wind turbine and solar panels.
They can fix the equipment during winter and install them during summer when days are long.
Though, I wouldn’t count on progressives to know where south is on a compass.
Maybe they can get a paper presentation about how the Inuit prepare for and survive winters?
They will breath air that is generated from materials on the Moon.
They can eat food that is grown on the moon or in orbit around the moon.
Low earth orbit is better.
No it isn’t. Launching anything from Earth is way too expensive.
Not until they can manufacture the parts there.
Mylar sheets are insubstantial barriers against radiation, micro meteorites and cold or heat of space.
Colonizing the moon or Mars just for the sake of colonizing is absurd.
We already know extended periods in space are bad for Earth born muscles and skeletal systems. This before figuring out how to deal with radiation and cosmic particles.
Or does NASA already have plans for ships with artificial gravity?
I’m all for mining the asteroid belt for fuel, rare earths and metals. But, they need much better robots and Earth landing systems to accomplish that over years.
The moon likely has caverns and lava tubes. I’d expect people to live in them. Large enough, and the caverns can be made into self-contained ecosystems with full spectrum solar lights, lakes and forests. And farms.
We know that cetaceans and pinipeds know how to retain bone density in the absence of gravity. We just need to find out how they do it. A terrific research project awaits attention.
Myself, I’ve long been interested in space as a frontier for humans, and that probably has something to do with all the sci fi I’ve read. I have to say though, it’s hard to forecast at what point it will be both financially and societally practical to have a mass migration into an alien body like our Moon (so as to really have a more or less independent civilization there). To do that, we’d have to have an advanced ‘nanobio’ tech to rival what the biosphere on Earth does for us naturally! That’s a pretty tall order, even given the prospect of technology continuing to advance.
Before we get very ambitious about numbers of people living on Luna, and before we look for some kind of direct corporate profit there, maybe we should focus more about the science and security benefits of just putting government money and corporate sponsorship into the Moon? For instance, if lunar telescopes could both explore the universe *and* help significantly with tracking dangerous asteroids, isn’t that worth quite a lot, independently of how many or how few people we’d have residing there?
Exploration is always into the unknown, and generally pays off. We won’t know what the opportunities are, until we go there. I’m up for it.
What is needed to preserve bone density, is something to stress the bones.
With the exception of electronics and perhaps engines, they will be able to manufacture almost all of these rockets from materials mined and processed on the moon.
It’s a lot cheaper to mine the moon than it is to mine asteroids.
We don’t know whether human beings can live in 1/6 g (the Moon) or 1/3 g (Mars) for extended periods. One thing we do know about 1/6 g is due to the research done by my college roommate and Master’s research colleague, who conducted material flammability tests from 1 micro-g to 3 g in decade increments: material flammability is maximum at 1/6 g. That makes a lunar colony a bit of a dicey proposition.
The moon has strategic significance.
Why do you think the Chinese are so interested?
Read your Heinlein.
Dolt.
Read my science fiction? You dummies make my argument for me and do not even realize it.
Besides, Heinlein is way overrated.
Love the way you avoid answering the question.
Are you that short of real responses?
Sooner or later we’re going to have to leave this planet to survive as a species if we aren’t eliminated before that happens. When would you propose we start taking the steps to do so?
Which Earth like planet do you propose we colonize to accomplish your fantasy?
Venus
Arch cynical pessimism got no one anywhere.
It doesn’t have to be an earth like planet.
They are unable to grow enough nutritious crops in artificial biosystems at this point. They’d need huge garden areas on their ships.
Or invent and build replicators like the ones simulated on Star Trek.
They aren’t trying too. What’s being grown on ISS was never more than experiments to see how it can be done.
It’s ok that they’ve done a successful launch finally, but it’s also at least a bit discouraging that this rocket is, economically, a giant government pork barrel project. It just seems more geared toward creating jobs for districts, than for any sort of economic effectiveness!
For cost effectiveness and reuseability, Spacex Starship is more exciting! *But* the Starship approach has it’s own risks, like say, the need to do as many as 10 different refueling operations in orbit, to get a Starship upper stage that is fully moon landing capable. Can Spacex really make this work?
Maybe having a beefed up Apollo/Space Shuttle-like rocket is a kind of insurance. If Starship doesn’t work, well you’ve got this other thing..
What more would you expect? Remember, form follows function.
“With Artemis, humans will return to the lunar surface, and this time to stay.”
Oh poor sods. Don’t they have enough money to come back?
Or are they going to be politicians, in which case I will gladly chip in.
What’s the going rate for tickets, for politicians?
Just debit the politician’s accounts. Most of the politicians we’d want to send have gotten absurdly wealthy during their terms.
Tickets for coming home will require most of their in-service wealth gains; in the case of numerous politicians, hundreds of millions.
Can’t we charge hundreds of millions for One Way tickets? Once we work out the bugs getting rid of the current pack of rascals I’m sure the one way ticket prices will come down.
I fail to see the logic of sending people to the moon at this point.
To put people and establish a base before the Chinese do.
If there’s no economic or practical or military case for the US to build and support a moon base, there’s no case for the Chinese to do so either. I say let the Chinese waste their money on one. What are they going to do, build a rail system to launch boulders at the US?
Or to put it another way, if there’s no case for a privately-funded moon base, there’s no economic case at all. There’s no military case that I’ve ever heard. That leaves ego alone. F that noise.
Rocks from space would make devastating weapons, if you figure out how to guide them to target properly.
Really? How big do they have to be to not burn up? How much energy does it take to launch those big ones?
And most of all, how is it any cheaper or more precise to launch big rocks from the moon rather than from earth orbit or earth itself?
Yep. Ever hear of places like Tunguska or Chicxulub?
No idea how big they have to be, I imagine it has more to do with composition of the rock.
Less energy than it would take to launch it from earth.
Precision isn’t really a factor, horseshoes, hand grenades, nuclear weapons, asteroids and all that. You just need a decent guidance package and some thrusters to adjust trajectory and you’re good to go.
You don’t need great precision, just add a few small rockets to the rock in order to tweak it’s path en route.
There’s also the rock that blew up in the atmosphere over Russia about a decade ago. That rock was only about 60 feet across and ended up hurting 10’s of thousands of people.
Where exactly do you plan to find these big rocks while in Earth orbit?
Earth’s surface gravity is about 6 times the Moon’s surface gravity. Add in the atmosphere that must be punched through, and it costs much more to launch anything from Earth.
They are called H-bombs and the time from launch to impact is a whole lot shorter than launching a big rock from the moon, at far less cost.
Yeah but, then you have that pesky radioactive fallout to worry about. Dropping rocks is much cleaner and environmentally friendly.
You’ve never heard of the military case for taking the higher ground?
You’ve never heard of economics, of costs and benefits, of tradeoffs?
You say: “There’s no military case that I’ve ever heard.”
I bring up the military case that you have somehow missed and you change to economics.
Troll much?
It’s hard to see when you refuse to even look.
Also, orbit is higher ground than the moon, energy- and cost-wise.
Is there anything else you wish to prove your ignorance of?
There’s no economic or practical or military case for the US to build and support a South Pole base on earth either, and still it is there.
Yes, for ego purposes. Are you proposing that ego alone is the reason to go back to the moon? Are you admitting there is no economic or practical or military case for going back to the moon?
The moon is the place to build rockets from.
The moon is also the perfect place to perfect the technology and techniques that will be needed to support life away from the earth.
Orbit is better, economically and energetically and practically.
No it isn’t. You still have to launch everything from Earth and that is hugely expensive.
Not until there are source materials and manufacturer facilities on the moon.
Unless, we can mine some of the moon’s huge meteoroid strikes the moon is likely a poor source for metals. Especially, metals for space travel and rocket thrusters.
Nor, is there a place on the moon or Mars where any weapon launched, can not be intercepted before it reaches Earth.
Keep in mind that approaching Earth’s atmosphere requires a very narrow approach angle.
All that is required is a slight deflection, not destruction.
The moon is an excellent source for aluminum, and that’s what rockets are made out of for the most part.
It takes a lot of mass to “intercept” a big rock that has been falling since it passed the Earth/Moon midpoint. Just examine all the work that is being done to try and stop killer asteroids/comets.
There a narrow approach angle only applies to lightweight space craft that you want to survive re-entry. For big rocks, just about any angle will do. They aren’t going to skip because they are much heavier than a spacecraft. As to burning up, just make the rock a little bit bigger.
Is this a militarily strategic thing, or what? Anyone parked on the surface of the moon is a bit of a sitting duck if it came to that. Getting to the moon before the USSR made some sense during the Cold War, but what is the advantage now?
Getting there before the CCP.
A sub-surface base would have multiple advantages including being harder to detect.
We’ll want to dig anyway to determine whether there are raw materials we can use. Might as well have the digging serve a dual purpose.
Lava tubes have already been spotted. There are probably more that we haven’t spotted.
I was not aware of that. Thanks
Here’s a wikipedia page, I just did a google search for lunar lava tubes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_lava_tube
A moon base would provide necessary data for human habitation in space. We, as a species, will need more territory to expand our population or we will live in huddled masses – something I don’t find optimal.
With more territory, there would no incentive for the oligarchs to reduce the population.
We will eventually need resources available in the solar system. I would rather have mines on asteroids than on Earth.
Orbital facilities are closer and more realistic.
How much territory and resources will humanity gain from an orbital platform?
There are also biological limitations to living in a zero gravity environment.
Space facilities are also subject to increased radiation.
Sub-surface lunar facilities could provide shielding and the slight gravity of the moon could forestall calcium loss in the inhabitants.
The moon’s gravity (1/6 is “slight”?) and radiation shielding provide zero benefit for interplanetary travel. Spacecraft either accelerate appreciably for a short time and cost weightless for a long time, or accelerate at truly slight rates (medically insignificant) the entire trip; the moon teaches nothing about either.
We don’t know what amount of gravity will reduce or eliminate calcium loss in humans.
The moon has some gravity and finding out if that is enough would be beneficial for long trips.
Orbital platforms don’t provide that info.
Long term habitation is impossible on an orbital platform while also not giving any territory with resources to utilize. It is a dead end.
You really need to come up to date on the science before you reject it out of hand.
1/6th less gravity means your rocket can be only a few percent as big at launch in order to make it too orbit. Then there is the absence of atmospheric drag.
Radiation shielding protects the passengers on interplanetary and interstellar voyages.
The most likely form of shielding will be the very water that the astronauts need for drinking and growing crops.
As for gravity, sections of the craft can be spun to provide artificial gravity.
You are assuming that only chemical rockets are available for these craft. That hasn’t been the case for decades.
Everything needed for an orbital facility will still have to be launched from earth, that costs way more than launching from the moon.
A complete waste of money, sending people to the moon. Imagine the amount of real science that could have been accomplished with just half this money. Big government has got to produce a big moon rocket though, for diversity, inclusion and equity. New photos and moon rocks coming our way though, Hee Haw.
Please define what you mean by ‘real science’.
The various Mars rovers, the various space telescopes, probes that were sent to other planets. This is just a few of the things that NASA actually does well. Examples of money pits that produce zero science? The current worthless space station is a perfect example as is this ridiculous moon rocket.
This SLS is a poor joke on taxpayers and the rocket-using customer base. Little more power than Saturn V using recycled Shuttle engines, NASA says they can build and launch one per year for $2B after $30B in development costs, entirely expendable. SpaceX spent less developing a more powerful and mostly reusable rocket that doesn’t cost taxpayers a dime. It’s like NASA using Model A engines to power a Model T taxi and throwing each one away after one trip.
$2 billion, $30 billion, a few billion more, here and there, and you might be starting to talk about some real money.
SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy is not as powerful as Artemis.
Starship is still in development so, it can’t be counted, yet. As for Starship’s development costs, the estimates are around $10 billion, so far.
I’m still waiting for the definition of ‘real science’.
SLS — $30B so far, and $2B per expendable launch. All taxpayer supported. No use whatsoever.
Starship — entirely privately funded, entirely reusable, cost per launch predicted 1/100 of SLS, and anyone who writes it off for being still in development can only be a government fanboi.
Oh, Scarecrow Repair, at least you are a semi coherent troll. It’s too bad I don’t have the time to engage with you properly. It’s been such a long time since I’ve had an opportunity to squish a troll. Sigh.
Yes, it’s too bad you don’t have the time to answer people who point out the error or your ways.
No answer yet; please come back with some actual rebuttal, something falsifiable in the scientific sense, not just personal insults.
Well, Scarecrow Repair, I’m back and I have a little time to engage now. Please review this list of logical fallacies,
List of fallacies – Wikipedia
I realize Wikipedia is not an authoritative site but, it will give a nice primer.
Also, Ad Homs, Strawmen, Red Herrings are so yesterday, please do better.
And if you’re going to use jargon, be creative, ‘fanboi’, really? How cute. If you’re going to spout horse feathers, make them colorful.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention Gaslighting. Please don’t, there is enough of that in the MSM, you’re and amateur at it. It’s a bad look.
Learning how to live long term in space doesn’t count as science?
Orbital habitats aren’t closer and cheaper, especially to support?
Once lunar colonies are established building and supporting orbital platforms will be cheaper to do from the moon. Even ones in orbit around the earth.
Every $$ spent on rocket science is a $$ not spent on climate science globalism.
It’s not a zero sum game.
The current climate hysteria was largely funded by cancelation of Apollo and replacement with “mission to planet earth”. People were calling the moon landings a waste of money at that time as well.
Whatever government subsidizes, it gets more of; ask the British about cobras in India and the French about rats in Indochina.
Government student loans subsidize marginal students, colleges reacted by creating marginal fields and marginal “scientists”, none of whom could cope with STEM rigor. Climate hysteria is just more of the same, full of marginal characters whose only skill is raising funds for more marginal studies of a settled science.
People, as in NASA bosses, were calling the moon landing a waste of money then because that is exactly what it was. Why do you think the remainder of the Apollo moon launches were scrapped? Because they were too expensive and there is no compelling reason to go there. The same is true today.
You really should read the entire quotes, not just the parts that support your fallacies.
They said the moon landing were a waste of time because there was no follow up. Pretty much to a man, they wanted the landings to be the first step in creating lunar colonies.
Asking for a friend–what happens if Commander Moonikin Campos comes back with data indicating that the human body cannot survive the radiation encountered from such a trip?
“…the human body cannot survive the radiation encountered from such a trip…”
How do you figure that? I realize Armstrong and Aldrin’s moon landing was faked by Hollywood but, I have reliably heard that Armstrong and Aldrin insisted on shooting the footage on site to make it more believable.
I think he’s referring to going to Mars
No, Commander Campos is aboard the Artemis collecting data for future human flight.
It seems that the sensing of humour might be diminishing. Honest, I wasn’t serious.
Maybe it’s a good time to review Poe’s Law.
The Artemis Tracker App works very nicely , interactive :
https://www.nasa.gov/specials/trackartemis/
Tested on Firefox Win10 Pro, am told it is good on Android.
I just want to add my agreement to the thoughts and sentiments of “Premium Cracker”
and “Scarecrow Repair” and others who have negatively commented on this latest —
ultimately manned — boondoggle of NASA: the Artemis colonization of the Moon.
Unmanned spacecraft, sure. But colonizing other worlds, like the Moon or Mars or
Titan? With people? It’s an irredeemably unscientific pipedream. These worlds are
extraordinarily far from Earth and thus extraordinarily isolated, both in time and
space, are insanely inhospitable to human life, and, indeed, when it comes to the
surfaces of the Moon and Titan, insanely inhospitable to any form of life that could
possibly exist anywhere in the universe, much less here on Earth, and when it comes to
the surfaces of the Moon and Mars, constantly being subjected to life-destroying solar
and cosmic radiation representing true hells for humans to try to live in — in many
different respects (like the Moon’s ultra-sharp micro-dust or Mars’ dust storms or
Titan’s ultra-cold atmosphere), have no feasible sources for the essential air,
water (ice in a cave is not attainable with non-existent machinery),
food, shelter, materiel (both inorganic and living), industrial base, ambient
temperatures/pressures or energy needed for human life to thrive on these worlds,
have no previously established infrastructure on them upon which a future human
colony could rely as its initial base of support, and offer no practical or scientific or
economic return on the HUGE investments that would be required to create
(hypothetically) comfortable human existence on them, even for short times. And to
supply ever-continuing, fabulously expensive, external support resources from Earth
to maintain even the barest essentials of human life on them for an indefinite
length of time would be a feat so vulnerable to failure that volunteering for such a
mission would be tantamount to suicide. Their environments are, by comparison,
horrendous alternatives even to the weirdest alternative living habitat you could
possibly concoct for man here on Earth at the very edges of Earth’s biosphere. Of
course, needless to say, as the clincher, the advocates of this nonsense want to run
the whole thing under the auspices of yet another glorious, governmental boondoggle
bureaucracy. That’ll work.
And if you want to argue that we won’t have to supply our space colonies because
they’ll manufacture (smelt, electrolyze, oxygenate, build, mine, process, transport,
grow, capture, etc.) all they need by themselves, you are seriously out of your mind
or just a plain, damned scientific illiterate. I don’t think, if NASA spent a
trillion dollars, it could get a manufacturing facility on the Moon to make one lead
pencil from scratch, much less rockets to take men to “the other colonies of the solar
system”.
Yes, there is always that one, last, far-out exception to this negativism: mining
operations on far-away worlds (or even on the Moon?) ultimately offering the last hope
for Earth before mankind uses up the many resources on it necessary for civilization
to continue … HERE. No one can be sure this is economically infeasible over a
150-year period when the POTENTIAL profits of such mining operations could go into the
MANY trillions of dollars. The only answer I can offer for this mining possibility is
… good luck. I personally cannot conceive of it working. And if it does work, I’m
sure your great, great, great, great, great-grandchildren will enjoy it immensely.
David Solan