Artemis I Spacecraft Set to Break Apollo Distance Record.
Orion spacecraft will break the record for farthest distance traveled by a spacecraft designed to carry humans to space.
Now 10 days into its mission, NASA’s Artemis I Orion spacecraft is providing our mission control teams with a wealth of important data—and hitting a few space exploration milestones along the way.
On Saturday, Nov. 26, at 7:42 a.m. EST, Orion will break the record for farthest distance traveled by a spacecraft designed to carry humans to deep space and safely return them to Earth. Flying in distant retrograde orbit— ‘distant’ in the sense that it’s at a high altitude from the lunar surface, and ‘retrograde’ because Orion will travel around the Moon opposite the direction the Moon travels around Earth—Orion will surpass the previous record of 248,655 statute miles, which was set by the Apollo 13 crew in 1970. Orion is expected to reach its maximum distance of more than 270,000 statute miles from Earth at 4:13 p.m. EST on Monday, Nov. 28.
Orion’s flight records, while impressive, serve an important purpose. By testing Orion in a variety of situations, NASA’s teams will better understand how the spacecraft performs in space and prepare for future missions with crew. Orion will spend an additional 15 days in flight on its 25.5-day journey before re-entering Earth’s atmosphere and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday, Dec. 11.
Flight Controllers in the White Flight Control Room at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston successfully performed a burn to insert Orion into a distant retrograde orbit by firing the orbital maneuvering system engine for 1 minutes and 28 seconds at 4:52 p.m. CST, propelling the spacecraft at 363 feet per second. Shortly before conducting the burn, Orion was traveling more than 57,00 miles above the lunar surface, marking the farthest distance it will reach from the Moon during the mission. While in lunar orbit, flight controllers will monitor key systems and perform checkouts while in the environment of deep space.
On Saturday, Nov. 26, Orion spacecraft will break the record for farthest distance traveled by a spacecraft designed to carry humans to space and safely return them to Earth. This distance is currently held by the Apollo 13 spacecraft at 248,655 miles (400,171 km) from Earth. Orion was specifically designed for missions to carry humans farther into space than ever before.
On Artemis I, engineers are testing several aspects of the Orion spacecraft needed for deep space missions with crew, including its highly capable propulsion system to maintain its course with precision and ensure its crew can get home, communication and navigation systems to maintain contact with the ground and orient the spacecraft, systems and features to handle radiation events, as well as a heat shield that can handle a high-speed reentry from the Moon. Both distance and duration demand that spacecraft must have systems that can reliably operate far from home, be capable of keeping astronauts alive in case of emergencies and still be light enough that a rocket can launch it.
Artemis II will test the systems required for astronauts to live and breathe in deep space. Long duration missions far from Earth drive engineers to design compact systems not only to maximize available space for crew comfort, but also to accommodate the volume needed to carry consumables like enough food and water for the entirety of a mission lasting days or weeks.