The crew of the Orion spacecraft has successfully completed a lunar orbit insertion maneuver, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced on April 2.
“The Artemis II crew is officially on its way to the moon“, he wrote in X.
Yesterday, the agency cleared the launch pad for the lunar orbit insertion maneuver. NASA indicated that to complete the maneuver, Orion will need to fire its main engine, capable of generating up to 2.7 tons of thrust, for 5 minutes and 49 seconds.
The SLS rocket, carrying the Orion spacecraft as part of the Artemis II mission, lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 1 at 6:35 p.m. local time.
NASA astronauts Reid Weissman, Christina Koch and Victor Glover, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, are expected to orbit the moon at a distance of approximately 8,000 km from its surface before returning to Earth.
The total duration of the mission is expected to be 10 days. The last manned mission to the moon took place in December 1972, as part of the American Apollo 17 mission.
If successful, the astronauts will reach a record distance from Earth in people.