Yesterday at 4:52 p.m. CST (23:52 CET, 22:52 GMT) the European Service Module’s auxiliary thrusters fired to put NASA’s Orion spacecraft into a lunar orbit, ten days after liftoff on Earth. The European Service Module is powering Orion to the Moon and back, providing electricity, propulsion, kee
. This elongated orbit around the Moon uses little fuel. Orion’s mission profile will see it leave halfway before the full twelve-day orbit, firing its thrusters in six days to fly closer to the Moon on a final flyby and then slingshot back to Earth.
ESA’s Philippe Deloo explains “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.”The Artemis I mission is an opportunity to push the Orion spacecraft to its limits.
“Mission control is enjoying pushing Orion and the European Service Module to their limits,” continues Philippe, “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.
The fourth European Service Module structure to power astronauts on NASA’s Orion spacecraft to the Moon is now complete. The structure is seen here at a Thales Alenia Space site in Turin, Italy. Credit: Thales Alenia Space
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