WASHINGTON — NASA’s Artemis 2 mission is on its way to the moon after a successful maneuver April 2.
The Orion spacecraft Integrity fired its main engine at 7:49 p.m. Eastern for five minutes and 50 seconds. The translunar injection, or TLI, burn, which took place as Orion reached the 185-kilometer perigee in its elliptical orbit around Earth, placed the spacecraft on a free-return trajectory around the moon.
“With that successful TLI, the crew is feeling pretty good up here on our way to the moon,” Jeremy Hansen, one of the four astronauts on Artemis 2, told controllers shortly after the burn.
At a briefing after the burn, NASA officials said the TLI burn had gone as planned. “For the first time since 1972 on Apollo 17, human beings have left Earth orbit,” said Lori Glaze, NASA acting associate administrator for exploration systems development.
The burn was “flawless,” she said, and is the last major maneuver by the spacecraft. “From this point forward, the laws of orbital mechanics are going to carry our crew to the moon, around the far side, and back to Earth.”
With the burn by the main engine on the spacecraft’s service module, Orion is now committed to a free-return trajectory around the moon. Orion will make its closest approach to the moon on April 6 before returning to Earth for a splashdown on the evening of April 10 off the coast of San Diego.
Orion had been in an elliptical Earth orbit since shortly after its April 1 launch from Kennedy Space Center. That orbit provided an opportunity to test spacecraft systems before committing to a flight around the moon. Those tests included a proximity operations, or “proxops,” demonstration where the Orion spacecraft maneuvered around its upper stage.
“We accomplished all the test objectives we set out for this proximity operations,” said Howard Hu, NASA Orion program manager, at the briefing. The test was designed to see how well the spacecraft maneuvered under manual control as it approached to within about 10 meters of docking targets on the upper stage, simulating maneuvers on later missions when Orion will dock with lunar landers.
“It was a great moment for all of us,” he said, adding that the performance of the spacecraft was “maybe better than we anticipated.”
The day spent in that elliptical orbit also confirmed that the spacecraft’s life support system was working well, he said. “We had a really great opportunity to just understand our overall performance across all these subsystems and making sure we’re ready to commit the crew to a safe journey to the moon and back.”
The mission has worked through some minor issues, including a brief communications outage shortly after reaching orbit caused by a ground system issue, as well as problems setting up the spacecraft’s toilet that were later resolved.
A caution warning was heard during the TLI burn itself that Judd Frieling, ascent flight director for Artemis 2, said linked to a divergence of pressure sensors in thrusters that had been previously seen. “Not an issue at all,” he said.
Artemis 2 now becomes the first crewed mission to go to the vicinity of the moon since Apollo 17 in December 1972. Hansen, a Canadian Space Agency astronaut, will be the first non-American to go to the moon, while crewmates Christina Koch and Victor Glover will be the first woman and first person of color, respectively, to go to the moon. The fourth member of the crew is the mission commander, Reid Wiseman.
“Nominal translunar injection burn complete. The Artemis II crew is officially on the way to the Moon,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a social media post. “America is back in the business of sending astronauts to the Moon. This time, farther than ever before.”
“Humanity has once again shown what we are capable of,” Hansen said after the burn, thanking everyone who has worked on Artemis 2. “It’s your hopes for the future that carry us now on this journey around the moon.”