Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

Orion spacecraft enters distant retrograde orbit around the moon

By

NASA’s Orion spacecraft has entered orbit around the moon, marking the start of its week-long orbit as part of the Artemis I mission. The plan is for the uncrewed spacecraft to test out equipment and hardware ahead of planned crewed missions around and to the moon, named Artemis II and III, respectively. To get into this orbit, Orion performed an engine burn for around one and a half minutes on Friday, November 25.

Orion is in an orbit called a distant retrograde orbit, meaning it is 40,000 miles away from the moon and is moving around the moon in the opposite direction from how the moon moves around the Earth. This efficient orbit requires minimal fuel to maintain, and as this orbit is distant from the moon, the spacecraft will complete half an orbit around the moon in one week before heading back toward Earth.

View of the Moon seen from ESA's European Service Module that is powering NASA's Orion spacecraft to the Moon and back, on flight day nine of the Artemis I mission, on 24 November 2022.
View of the Moon seen from ESA’s European Service Module that is powering NASA’s Orion spacecraft to the Moon and back, on flight day nine of the Artemis I mission, on November 24, 2022. NASA

At some point today, Saturday, November 26, Orion will pass the record for the farther distance traveled by a spacecraft designed for humans, according to NASA. The record was set by the Apollo 13 spacecraft at 248,655 miles (400,171 km) from Earth, and Orion is expected to travel a total of 270,000 miles from Earth — a point it should reach on Monday.

Recommended Videos

In an update by the European Space Agency (ESA), which provided Orion’s service module, Philippe Deloo, manager for Orion Service Module Program at ESA, shared that the fuel efficiency of the spacecraft is better than expected.

Related

“The European Service Module is operating more fuel-efficiently than the Artemis mission designers had foreseen, and it produces more electrical power while consuming less — many things have impressed us on the module’s performance so far,” Deloo said. “Mission control is enjoying pushing Orion and the European Service Module to their limits. The years of planning, designing, and building to the highest specifications are paying off, the European Service Module is performing better than we could have ever expected, and we have lots of data to analyze and learn from to ensure we will be taking astronauts to the Moon in the safest and most efficient way possible.”

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
There’s a cave on the moon where astronauts could possibly live
lunar lava tubes on the moon

Getting humans into space is hard enough, but having them stay on another body for any length of time is even more challenging. When astronauts visited the moon in the Apollo missions, they lived in their spacecraft for the few days of their missions. But in the future NASA wants to send astronauts to visit places like the moon or Mars for longer -- for periods of weeks or even months. That means they'll need a home habitat of some kind to live in, perform research, and perhaps even grow crops.

Some suggestions for how to build lightweight habitats that are easier to transport include creating inflatable habitats or even growing habitats from fungus. But the most efficient option might be for astronauts to find locations that already exist where they can stay. That's the hope of research into lava tubes -- underground caves found on both the moon and Mars that were created by the movement of lava long ago.

Read more
China makes history by returning the first sample from far side of the moon
This photo taken on June 25, 2024 shows the retrieval site of the return capsule of the Chang'e-6 probe in Siziwang Banner, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

This photo taken on June 25, 2024, shows the retrieval site of the return capsule of the Chang'e-6 probe in Siziwang Banner, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Xinhua/Jin Liwang

A Chinese space mission has made history by bringing the first lunar sample from the far side of the moon back to Earth. The Chang'e-6 mission landed on the moon's far side earlier this month, where it collected a sample that was returned to Earth on Tuesday, June 25.

Read more
China’s Chang’e 6 mission blasts off from lunar surface carrying moon rocks
This image shows China's Chang'e 6 lander on the surface of the moon.

This image shows China's Chang'e 6 lander on the surface of the moon. CNSA

China's Chang'e 6 mission, which made an impressive touchdown on the moon this past weekend, has scooped up samples from the lunar surface and has now taken off. It has departed the moon to carry the samples back to Earth for study, as reported by China's state news agency.

Read more