All previous thruster burns were 17 seconds or less. The 95-second burn provided additional data to characterize the thrusters and the radiative heating on the spacecraft’s solar array wings to help inform Orion’s operational constraints. The burn was initially planned for a shorter duration but was lengthened as part of the team’s effort to add test objectives to the mission. During the burn, Orion used six of its auxiliary thrusters on the European Service module to fire for 95 seconds. On Flight Day 15, Orion also performed a planned orbit maintenance burn to maintain the spacecraft’s trajectory and decrease its velocity ahead of its Thursday departure from a distant lunar orbit. “We continue to learn how the system is performing, where our margins are, and how to operate and work with the vehicle as an integrated team.” “We are continuing to collect flight test data and buy down risk for crewed flight,” said Mike Sarafin, Artemis mission manager. Orion will conduct a burn to depart the orbit at 3:53 p.m. The Artemis I mission management team met today to review the overall status of the flight test and polled “go” for Orion to depart from its distant retrograde orbit, where it has been since Nov. 27, 2022) On flight day 12 of the 25.5-day Artemis I mission, a camera on the tip of one of Orion’s solar arrays captured the Moon as Orion travels in distant retrograde orbit around the Moon.
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