Kochi: The Orion capsule carrying four astronauts including a woman on its way to a lunar mission has started orbiting the Earth.
Flight control teams are putting its engines, navigation and life support systems through their paces to make sure everything is working perfectly before committing to deep space, BBC reported.
If all the checks are passed, they will later fire Orion’s main engine for five minutes and 45 seconds, to send the four astronauts on their way to lunar orbit.
The powerful engine burn will sling the crew out of Earth orbit and on towards the Moon.
It is the prerogative of the to execute “trans-lunar injection” burn to put the spacecraft on the right trajectory to the Moon – and bring the astronauts home or postpone firing of the motor.
Launched by the Artemis II rocket, the space mission carrying four astronauts blasted off from Florida on Wednesday.
The launch becomes historic as it is the first time humans are traveling beyond low-Earth orbit in more than 50 years.
The mission is a major step in NASA’s plan to return humans to the moon.
The 32-storey rocket rose from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.
Astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen are on a nearly 10-day journey.
Glover is the first non white, Koch is the first woman, and Hansen is the first non-U.S. citizen to travel beyond low Earth orbit and to the Moon’s vicinity. Artemis II is a flight to explore subsequent Artemis missions.
They are planned to return humans to the lunar surface in 2028 for the first time since the Apollo program.
Apollo 8 of 1968 was the first crewed flight around the Moon during the Apollo program.
It was Apollo 13 which successfully landed on the Moon and returned to Eartth.
Orion orbits Earth
