The spacecraft will make its 14th close approach to our star, whipping through extreme conditions at tremendous speeds.
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Watch NASA's Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft return to Earth on Sunday
NASA's Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft will return to Earth on Sunday (Dec. 11) after nearly a month in space, and you can watch the homecoming live.
SpaceX launches Japanese lander, UAE rover to the moon
On Sunday morning (Dec. 11), a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched a private Japanese moon lander that's carrying a UAE rover, among other payloads.
Live coverage: Falcon 9 launch and landing on tap overnight
Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The Falcon 9 rocket will launch a commercial lunar lander for the Japanese company ispace. Follow us on Twitter.
To Fight Climate Change, We Could Block the Sun. A Lightweight Solar Sail Could Make it Feasible
Can we build an enormous umbrella to dim the Sun? Such a feat would be a megaproject on a scale like no other. It would take at least 400 dedicated rocket launches a year, for ten years (There have been 172 rocket launches by all nations so far in 2022). The project would weigh in at 550,000 tons: at its lightest. And it would be an ecological experiment that puts us all – the entire planet – in the petri dish, with high risk and high reward. But could such a project actually reverse climate change and bring us back from the brink of global disaster?
Perseverance’s Latest Sample is Just Crumbled Regolith. When Scientists get Their Hands on it, we’ll Learn so Much About how to Live on Mars
The Mars Sample Return (MSR) part of Perseverance’s mission is picking up – literally. For the past few months, the rover has concentrated on picking up samples that will eventually be returned to Earth as part of the future Mars Sample Return mission. Back on Earth, plenty of advanced technologies can poke and prod the samples in ways that would never be feasible to launch with a spacecraft. However, if scientists decide to poke or prod Perseverance’s latest collections, they might have a hard time because they are made of regular regolith.
Orion moonship closes in for Sunday re-entry and splashdown
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION
A camera on one of the Orion spacecraft’s four solar array wings captured this view of a crescent Earth on Saturday, Dec. 10, the Artemis 1 mission’s final full day in space. Credit: NASAClosing out a 25-day voyage around the moon, NASA’s Artemis 1 spacecraft closed in on Earth Saturday, on track for a 25,000-mph re-entry Sunday that will subject the unpiloted capsule to a hellish 5,000-degree inferno before splashdown off Baja California.
In an unexpected but richly-symbolic coincidence, the end of the Artemis 1 mission, expected at 12:39 p.m., will come 50 years to the day after the final Apollo moon landing in 1972.
Testing the Orion capsule’s 16.5-foot-wide Apollo-derived Avcoat heat shield is the top priority of the Artemis 1 mission, “and it is our priority-one objective for a reason,” said mission manager Mike Sarafin.
“There is no arc jet or aerothermal facility here on Earth capable of replicating hypersonic reentry with a heat shield of this size,” he said. “And it is a brand new heat shield design, and it is a safety-critical piece of equipment. It is designed to protect the spacecraft and (future astronauts) … so the heat shield needs to work.”
Launched November 16 on the maiden flight of NASA’s huge new Space Launch System rocket, the unpiloted Orion capsule was propelled out of Earth orbit and on to the moon for an exhaustive series of tests, putting its propulsion, navigation, power and computer systems through their paces in the deep space environment.
While flight controllers ran into still-unexplained glitches with its power system, initial “funnies” with its star trackers and degraded performance from a phased array antenna, the Orion spacecraft and its European Space Agency-built service module worked well overall, achieving virtually all of their major objectives to this point.
“We’ve collected an immense amount of data characterizing system performance from the power system, the propulsion, GNC (guidance, navigation and control) and so far, the flight control team has downlinked to over 140 gigabytes of engineering and imagery data,” said Jim Geffre, the Orion vehicle integration manager.
The team is already analyzing that data “to help not only understand the performance on Artemis 1, but play forward for all subsequent missions,” he said.
If all goes well, NASA plans to follow the Artemis 1 mission by sending four astronauts around the moon in the program’s second flight — Artemis 2 — in 2024. The first moon landing would follow in the 2025-26 timeframe when NASA says the first woman and the next man will set foot on the lunar surface.
The unpiloted Artemis 1 capsule flew through half of an orbit around the moon that carried it farther from Earth — 268,563 miles — than any previous human-rated spacecraft. Two critical firings of its main engine set up a low-altitude lunar flyby last Monday that, in turn, put the craft on course for splashdown Sunday.
This graphic illustrates the skip re-entry the Orion spacecraft will perform on Dec. 11 as it plunges into the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean. Credit: NASA
NASA originally planned to bring the ship down west of San Diego, but a predicted cold front bringing higher winds and rougher seas prompted mission managers to move the landing site south by about 350 miles. Splashdown is now expected south of Guadalupe Island some 200 miles west of Baja California.
Approaching from nearly due south, the Orion spacecraft, traveling at 32 times the speed of sound, is expected to slam back into the discernible atmosphere at an altitude of 400,000 feet, or about 76 miles, at 12:20 p.m.
NASA planners devised a unique “skip-entry” profile that will cause Orion skip across the top of the atmosphere like a flat stone skipping across calm water. Orion will plunge from 400,000 feet to about 200,000 feet in just two minutes, then climb back up to about 295,000 feet before resuming its computer-guided fall to Earth.
Within a minute and a half of entry, atmospheric friction will generate temperatures across the heat shield reaching nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, enveloping the spacecraft in an electrically charged plasma that will block communications with flight controllers for about five minutes.
After another two-and-a-half minute communications blackout during its second drop into the lower atmosphere, the spacecraft will continue decelerating as it closes in on the targeted landing site, slowing to around 650 mph, roughly the speed of sound, about 15 minutes after the entry began.
Finally, at an altitude of about 22,000 feet and a velocity of around 280 mph, small drogue parachutes will deploy to stabilize the spacecraft. The ship’s main parachutes will deploy at an altitude of about 5,000 feet, slowing Orion to a sedate 18 mph or so for splashdown at 12:39 p.m.
Expected mission duration: 25 days 10 hours 52 minutes, covering 1.4 million miles since blastoff November 16.
NASA and Navy recovery crews aboard the USS Portland, an amphibious dock vessel, will be standing by within sight of splashdown, ready to secure the craft and tow it into the Navy ship’s flooded “well deck.”
Once the deck’s gates are closed, the water will be pumped out, leaving Orion on a custom stand, protecting its heat shield, for the trip back to Naval Base San Diego.
But first, the recovery team will stand by for up to two hours while engineers collect data on how the heat of re-entry soaked into the spacecraft and what effects, if any, that might have on the crew cabin temperature.
“We are on track to have a fully successful mission with some bonus objectives that we’ve achieved along the way,” Sarafin said. “And on entry day, we will realize our priority one objective, which is to demonstrate the vehicle at lunar re-entry conditions.”
Orion's 'Easter eggs' revealed: NASA flew secret messages to the moon on Artemis 1
It can now be revealed that NASA's Orion spacecraft carried secret messages to the moon on its Artemis 1 mission. What's more, the hidden notes were in plain sight the entire time.
A New Way to Produce Primordial Black Holes in the Early Universe
Primordial black holes remain an intriguing option to potentially explain dark matter. A new study has found a plausible scenario for creating them in the early universe.
Iconic Earthrise By Artemis 1, Rule-Breaking GRB, SpaceX Launches Starshield
Construction Begins on the Square Kilometer Array. Artemis I’s iconic crescent Earthrise picture. A gamma-ray burst that breaks all the rules. SpaceX launches a new service.
We Could Simulate Living in Lunar Lava Tubes in Caves on Earth
Simulation is key to space exploration. Scientists and engineers test as many scenarios as possible before subjecting their projects to the harshness of space. It should not be any different with the future living quarters of explorers on the Moon. One of the most commonly cited locations for a future permanent lunar base is in the relatively recently discovered lava tube caves scattered throughout the lunar mare. Simulating such an environment on Earth might be difficult, but a team from the Center for Space Exploration in China thinks they might have a solution – using karst caves to simulate lunar lava tubes.
What time does the Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft splash down on Dec. 11 to end NASA's moon mission?
NASA's Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft will end a 26-day mission to the moon on Sunday, Dec. 11, and here's what time to watch.
'Star Trek: Discovery' Season 4 warps onto home video and is 24% off for the holidays
Relive all the outer space heroics of Star Trek: Discovery season 4 on Blu-ray, DVD, and Limited Edition Blu-ray Steelbook and save 24%.
NASA rolls Artemis 1's huge launch tower off pad for repairs, upgrades (photos)
The huge tower that supported the epic liftoff of NASA's Artemis 1 moon mission last month has left the launch pad.
How NASA's Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft will splash down to end its moon mission in 8 not-so-easy steps
The Artemis 1 mission will end nearly a month in space with a series of wild landing steps, from skipping off of Earth's atmosphere to splashing down in the ocean.
Relive the Artemis 1 launch as the Orion spacecraft prepares to return (photos)
As Orion quickly closes the gap between the moon and Earth ahead of its Pacific Ocean splashdown on Sunday (Dec. 11), we're looking back at the epic launch that got us here.
NASA’s Lunar Flashlight hitching ride to moon on SpaceX rocket
Artist’s illustration of the Lunar Flashlight spacecraft firing its lasers toward the moon’s surface. Credit: NASA
NASA’s Lunar Flashlight spacecraft, a small briefcase-size CubeSat that could break new ground in the search for water ice on the moon, is hitching a ride to space on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket along with the privately-developed Hakuto-R moon lander after missing a launch opportunity on NASA’s Artemis 1 mission.
NASA Tests a Solar Sail Segment of its Enormous Solar Cruiser Mission
A team led by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) was recently selected to develop a solar sail spacecraft that would launch sometime in 2025. Known as the Solar Cruiser, this mission of opportunity measures 1653 m2 (~17790 ft2) in area and is about the same thickness as a human hair. Sponsored by the Science Mission Directorate’s (SMD) Heliophysics Division, this technology demonstrator will integrate several new solar sail technologies developed by various organizations to mature solar sail technology for future missions.
If Dark Matter is Made of Axions, This Could be the Detector That Finds Them
As we’ve noted in plenty of other articles, science also moves forward by constraints. Understanding the limits of a physical phenomenon helps to develop better methods of looking for it, especially in its absence. Dark matter is an archetype of a missing phenomenon, but there are plenty of potential explanations for it. One of them is known as the axion, which was originally developed as a hypothetical particle that could plug a hole in the Standard Model of particle physics but could also solve the problem of dark energy. That is if they actually exist. Now a new experiment from researchers at CERN can help the scientific community better define where to look for those axions.
James Webb Space Telescope peers into the 'ghostly light' of interstellar space
The James Webb Space Telescope has granted astronomers a look at the faint almost ghostly light emitted from stars that exist between galaxies packed into galactic clusters.
Rocket Lab now aims to launch 1st Electron booster from US soil on Dec. 13
The commercial launch company Rocket Lab will have to wait a few more days for its first-ever launch from U.S. soil due to bad weather.
