Watch: NASA’s Orion spacecraft successfully enters Moon’s orbit

Washington:

NASA’s Orion spacecraft was placed in lunar orbit on Friday after the much-delayed Moon mission successfully went ahead, officials said.

The US space agency said on its Web site that a week after the spacecraft took off from Florida for the Moon, flight controllers “successfully performed a burn to put Orion into a distant retrograde orbit.”

Live Now: The @NASA_Orion The spacecraft is burning up to enter a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon, an orbit that is at a high altitude above the Moon’s surface and travels around Earth in the opposite direction to the Moon. #artemishttps://t.co/gknxQkBWFc

— NASA (@NASA) November 25, 2022

The spacecraft will carry astronauts to the Moon for years to come – the first to set foot on its surface since the last Apollo mission in 1972.

The purpose of this first test flight without a crew is to ensure that the vehicle is safe.

“The orbit is far enough that Orion will fly about 40,000 miles above the Moon,” NASA said.

The agency said flight controllers in lunar orbit will monitor key systems and perform checkouts in the deep-space environment.

Orion will take about a week to complete half an orbit around the Moon. According to NASA, it will then exit orbit for the journey back home.

On Saturday, the ship is expected to pass as far as 40,000 miles from the Moon, a record for a habitable capsule. The current record is held by the Apollo 13 spacecraft at 248,655 miles (400,171 km) from Earth.

It will then begin its journey back to Earth after a 25-day flight with a landing in the Pacific Ocean on December 11.

The success of this mission would determine the future of the Artemis 2 mission, which would take astronauts around the Moon without landing, then Artemis 3, which would eventually mark the return of humans to the lunar surface.

Those missions are due in 2024 and 2025, respectively.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)