Orion will swing back into contact
Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2025 9:22 am
The burn will change Orion’s velocity by about 350 mph, committing the craft to a course-changing flyby. And it will be executed during the 34 minutes Orion is out of contact with flight controllers.
A camera mounted one of the Orion spacecraft’s four solar wings captured this “selfie” showing the unpiloted capsule 57,000 miles from Earth during the outbound trip to the moon following launch Wednesday from the Kennedy Space Center.
Two minutes after passing within about 80 miles of the lunar surface at 7:57 a.m., as it whips around the moon on a trajectory that will carry the spacecraft back out toward a planned “distant retrograde orbit,” or DRO.
In that planned orbit, Orion will reach a point farther from buy phone number list Earth — 268,558 miles — than any previous human-rated vehicle, as flight controllers test its propulsion, navigation and power systems.
“We’ll do the burn … off the backside of the moon for about two and a half minutes,” said Flight Director Jeff Radigan. “And the burn will really put us on our way to the (planned) distant retrograde orbit, which is where we’re going to continue the checkout of Orion.
“All of us will really be looking to receive data since the burn is done on the backside of the moon and we’ll lose comm with a vehicle for a little bit of time, it’ll autonomously do the burn. And then we’ll pick it up and see how Orion’s doing.”
Orion’s initial post-launch flight path was set up to carry the spacecraft around the moon and back to Earth even if the main engine failed to fire. After the burn, a free return will no longer be possible and Orion will be reliant on its propulsion system to make it back to Earth.
A camera mounted one of the Orion spacecraft’s four solar wings captured this “selfie” showing the unpiloted capsule 57,000 miles from Earth during the outbound trip to the moon following launch Wednesday from the Kennedy Space Center.
Two minutes after passing within about 80 miles of the lunar surface at 7:57 a.m., as it whips around the moon on a trajectory that will carry the spacecraft back out toward a planned “distant retrograde orbit,” or DRO.
In that planned orbit, Orion will reach a point farther from buy phone number list Earth — 268,558 miles — than any previous human-rated vehicle, as flight controllers test its propulsion, navigation and power systems.
“We’ll do the burn … off the backside of the moon for about two and a half minutes,” said Flight Director Jeff Radigan. “And the burn will really put us on our way to the (planned) distant retrograde orbit, which is where we’re going to continue the checkout of Orion.
“All of us will really be looking to receive data since the burn is done on the backside of the moon and we’ll lose comm with a vehicle for a little bit of time, it’ll autonomously do the burn. And then we’ll pick it up and see how Orion’s doing.”
Orion’s initial post-launch flight path was set up to carry the spacecraft around the moon and back to Earth even if the main engine failed to fire. After the burn, a free return will no longer be possible and Orion will be reliant on its propulsion system to make it back to Earth.