Ateo - 12-11-2022 at 10:46 AM
At 9:40AM PST, NASA's Orion capsule returned from lunar orbit and splashed down successfully, 5 miles from the USS Portland, off beautiful Baja!
Congrats to NASA and to humankind!
After traveling 1.4 million miles through space, orbiting the Moon, and collecting data that will prepare us to send astronauts on future #Artemis
missions, the @NASA_Orion spacecraft is home.
The mannequin in the capsule was named after Arturo Campos, a Mexican American engineer who played a key role in bringing the crippled Apollo 13
spacecraft safely back to Earth.
[Edited on 12-11-2022 by Ateo]
David K - 12-11-2022 at 10:48 AM
Orion Capsule splashdown off Baja
LancairDriver - 12-11-2022 at 10:50 AM
Did any Nomads witness this splashdown off Baja? Also, what area did it land in? The US news coverage was not specific as to location, although the
video of the parachute decent and splashdown was very good.
Ateo - 12-11-2022 at 10:59 AM
nasa.gov if u want to watch live.
They're sending boats and recovery crews now......
Curious if they moved it down from San Diego area to Baja due to weather and waves as a storm system is currently here in Oside.
Maybe off Ensenada? Or further down?
EDIT: Baja Nomad's Don Pisto reporting the splashdown was off of Isla Guadalupe.
[Edited on 12-11-2022 by Ateo]
Don Pisto - 12-11-2022 at 11:00 AM
perfect splashdown by Guadalupe island
Ateo - 12-11-2022 at 11:02 AM
NASA reports that the Orion spacecraft is floating stably in the ocean. Navy helicopters see no damage to the spacecraft or fuel leaking from it.
Crews will soon approach the capsule on small boats. It will be hours until it is pulled up out of the water.
Ateo - 12-11-2022 at 11:25 AM
"Suspended under parachutes, an astronaut capsule without astronauts made a gentle splash in the Pacific on Sunday, bringing NASA’s Artemis I moon
mission to a close.
The end of the uncrewed test flight coincided with the 50th anniversary of the landing of Apollo 17 on the moon, the last time that NASA astronauts
walked there.
The Artemis program is the successor to Apollo, and after years of delays and a mounting price tag, the new rocket and spacecraft that will take
astronauts back to the moon worked about as smoothly as mission managers could have hoped.
“If you asked me to grade it, I’d give us an A+,” Catherine Koerner, the deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development at
NASA said on NASA Television as Orion approached Earth Sunday morning. “We’ve been learning how the spacecraft operates, and we’ve been learning
how to fly this amazing machine.”
The moon trip capped a year of spectacular successes for NASA. Its James Webb Space Telescope, which launched almost a year ago, began sending back
breathtaking images of the cosmos this summer. Its DART mission showed in September that slamming into an asteroid on purpose could protect Earth in
the future if a deadly space rock is discovered on a collision course with our planet.
With the conclusion of Artemis I, more attention will shift toward SpaceX, the private rocket company founded by Elon Musk. NASA is relying on a
version of Starship, the company’s next-generation spacecraft that has not yet flown to space, to land astronauts on the moon.
On Sunday, just after noon Eastern time, the Orion crew capsule — where astronauts will sit during future flights — re-entered the Earth’s
atmosphere at 24,600 miles per hour. This was the mission’s last major objective: to demonstrate that the capsule’s heat shield could withstand
the searing temperatures as it slammed into air molecules.
By design, the capsule bounced off the upper layer of air before re-entering a second time. It was the first time that a capsule designed for
astronauts had performed this maneuver, known as a skip-entry, which enables more precise steering toward the landing site.
At approximately 12:40 p.m., the capsule settled in the Pacific Ocean off Mexico’s Baja peninsula. Because of bad weather near San Diego, NASA had
shifted the landing site about 350 miles to the south.
The capsule and the Space Launch System, a giant new rocket, are key pieces of Artemis, which aims to land astronauts on the moon near its south pole
as early as 2025.
During the 26 days of Artemis I, glitches popped up as expected, but the flight appeared to be devoid of major malfunctions that would require a
lengthy investigation and redesign.
“It’s a great demonstration that this stuff works,” said Daniel L. Dumbacher, the executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics
and Astronautics. Mr. Dumbacher oversaw early work on the Space Launch System more than a decade ago when he was a top human spaceflight official at
NASA." - NY Times
surfhat - 12-12-2022 at 10:07 AM
Good thing it was unmanned since it came down near Guadeloupe Island. haha Shark cage diving central.
While it may be a thrill to dive with great whites in a safety cage, I will pass.
The sound of the thump, thump thump from the movie we all know is enough for me. Back to the Artemis. Sorry for the temporary diversion.
I saw enough sharks during my years of surfing and pulling my legs up on the board and hoping for the best. Peace, love for Baja, and fish tacos to
all.