CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA’s Orion capsule entered an orbit stretching tens of hundreds of miles across the moon Friday, because it neared the halfway mark of its test flight.
The capsule and its three test dummies entered lunar orbit greater than every week after launching on the $4 billion demo that’s meant to pave the way in which for astronauts. It’s going to remain on this broad but stable orbit for nearly every week, completing just half a lap before heading home.
As of Friday’s engine firing, the capsule was 238,000 miles from Earth. It’s expected to achieve a maximum distance of virtually 270,000 miles in a couple of days. That may set a recent distance record for a capsule designed to hold people at some point.
“It’s a statistic, however it’s symbolic for what it represents,” Jim Geffre, an Orion manager, said in a NASA interview earlier within the week. “It’s about difficult ourselves to go farther, stay longer and push beyond the boundaries of what we’ve previously explored.”
NASA considers this a dress rehearsal for the following moon flyby in 2024, with astronauts. A lunar landing by astronauts could follow as soon as 2025. Astronauts last visited the moon 50 years ago during Apollo 17.
Earlier within the week, Mission Control in Houston lost contact with the capsule for nearly an hour. On the time, controllers were adjusting the communication link between Orion and the Deep Space Network. Officials said the spacecraft remained healthy.
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