he Orion capsule returned successfully this Sunday after 25 days of travel and closed the historic Artemis I unmanned mission, which circumnavigated the Moon and is the spearhead of a program with which NASA plans to establish a permanent presence on the earth satellite.
The Orion fell into the waters of the Pacific Ocean, off Baja California (Mexico) at the scheduled time, around 11:40 local time (17:40 GMT), after deploying a system of eleven parachutes in the planned sequence that allowed it to reduce about 325 miles per hour (523 km/h) speed to just under 20 miles per hour (32 km/h) with which he dove.
Minutes before that, the spacecraft had reached Earth’s atmosphere while traveling at 25,000 miles per hour (40,000 km/h), equivalent to 32 times the speed of sound, and was located at an altitude of about 400,000 feet (122,000 meters).
During the process in which it crossed the atmosphere, the ship experienced up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,800 degrees Celsius) of temperature, equivalent to half the surface of the Sun, and for which it has tested an innovative thermal shield five meters wide. .
“The final chapter of NASA’s journey to the Moon comes to an end. Orion, back on Earth, “confirmed Rob Navias, from the NASA Communications office, during the broadcast of the descent made by the space agency, while the images showed the capsule floating in Pacific waters.
About ten minutes later, helicopters sent from the US Navy ship USS Portland flew over the capsule and confirmed to the mission controllers the good condition of the ship after its descent, which concluded a trip in which Orion covered 1.4 million miles (2.2 million kilometers) since liftoff on November 16.
“It is historic, we are starting a new stage in deep space with a new generation of technology,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said emotionally in statements to the US space agency after the spacecraft’s arrival.
NASA’s plans are to send Artemis II in 2024 and the following year Artemis III, in which astronauts, including a woman and a man of color, would touch down on the satellite for the first time since 1972, when they did. those sent to the Moon with the Apollo XVII mission.
