NASA loses contact with Artemis 1's Orion spacecraft for 47 minutes - Space.com

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A photograph of the satellite and Earth taken by cameras connected committee NASA's Orion capsule arsenic it makes a adjacent attack to the lunar surface. (Image credit: NASA)

NASA unexpectedly mislaid interaction with its moonbound Orion capsule aboriginal Wednesday greeting (Nov. 23), for reasons that stay unclear.

The uncrewed Orion has been performing good since launching toward the moon past Wednesday (Nov. 16) connected NASA's Artemis 1 mission. But this Wednesday (Nov. 23) brought a blip: Mission controllers mislaid connection with Orion astatine 1:09 a.m. EST (0609 GMT) portion reconfiguring a nexus betwixt the capsule and the Deep Space Network, the acceptable of vigor dishes that NASA uses to speech to its farflung spacecraft.

"The reconfiguration has been conducted successfully respective times successful the past fewer days, and the squad is investigating the origin of the nonaccomplishment of signal," NASA officials wrote successful a brief update connected Wednesday (opens successful caller tab).

"The squad resolved the contented with a reconfiguration connected the crushed side," they added. "Engineers are examining information from the lawsuit to assistance find what happened, and the command and information handling officer will beryllium downlinking information recorded onboard Orion during the outage to see successful that assessment."

The connection outage lasted 47 minutes, and Orion came retired of it successful bully shape; the spacecraft is steadfast and suffered nary evident sick effects, NASA officials said.

Orion is gearing up for a important maneuver: It's scheduled to execute an motor pain connected Friday (Nov. 25) that volition insert the capsule into orbit astir the moon. If each goes well, Orion volition enactment successful that orbit for astir a week, past caput backmost toward Earth connected Dec. 1.

The capsule volition get present with a parachute-aided splashdown successful the Pacific Ocean disconnected the California seashore connected Dec. 11.

Artemis 1 is simply a shakeout cruise for Orion and NASA's elephantine Space Launch System, the most almighty rocket ever to alert successfully. The duo are slated to alert astronauts for the archetypal clip successful 2024 connected Artemis 2, which volition nonstop a crewed Orion astir the moon.

Artemis 3 volition travel a twelvemonth oregon truthful later, landing astronauts adjacent the moon's southbound rod — the spot wherever NASA aims to physique a crewed outpost, 1 of the main goals of its Artemis program.

Mike Wall is the writer of "Out There (opens successful caller tab)" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a publication astir the hunt for alien life. Follow him connected Twitter @michaeldwall (opens successful caller tab). Follow america connected Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens successful caller tab) or Facebook (opens successful caller tab).

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Michael Wall is simply a Senior Space Writer with Space.com (opens successful caller tab) and joined the squad successful 2010. He chiefly covers exoplanets, spaceflight and subject space, but has been known to dabble successful the abstraction creation beat. His publication astir the hunt for alien life, "Out There," was published connected Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a subject writer, Michael worked arsenic a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. successful evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's grade from the University of Arizona, and a postgraduate certificate successful subject penning from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find retired what his latest task is, you tin travel Michael connected Twitter.

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