NASA mission “Artemis 1” swung into lunar orbit Berlin Airport: Climate activists hold on to the runway

About ten days after launch, the “Orion” capsule of NASA’s Artemis 1 lunar mission swung into orbit around the moon. During its test flight on Friday, the unmanned capsule fired up its engines as planned and swung into orbit.

This has been announced by the American space agency NASA. Its orbit is about 80,000 kilometers from the surface of the moon, so “Orion” needs six days for a half orbit. The capsule will fly around the moon in a direction opposite to that in which the moon orbits the earth. According to NASA, this orbit has the advantage that it is very stable and that “Orion” consumes relatively little fuel on it.

After months of delays, the mission “Artemis 1” took off for a first test launch on November 16 (local time). The Orion capsule was launched with the Space Launch System rocket from the Cape Canaveral cosmodrome in the US state of Florida. A few days ago, it had come as close to the moon as planned for the entire test mission — about 80 miles.

After two million flying kilometers back to earth

The unmanned capsule would be underway for about two weeks before it is expected to return to Earth on December 11 after flying about two million miles.

The mission has not scored well so far: after delays and exploding costs in development and construction, the start of the test had to be postponed several times. With the ‘Artemis’ program, named after the Greek goddess of the moon, American astronauts should land on the moon again in the coming years, including a woman and a non-white for the first time. (aeg/sda/dpa)