NASA’s Orion Spacecraft Completes Lunar Flyby; Gets Selfie With the Moon

NASA's Orion Spacecraft has made history.

The space agency's uncrewed spacecraft has recently completed a flyby of the Moon after successfully firing its orbital maneuvering system engine, re-acquiring Earth's signal in the process.

NASA expects the spacecraft to successfully return to Earth sometime next month if CNBC's report still holds.

NASA Orion Spacecraft Lunar Flyby Details

NASA mentioned in its latest blog post that its Orion spacecraft had re-acquired its Deep Space Network after completing an outbound powered flyby burn at 7:44 am EST. It did so by firing its orbital maneuvering system engine for two and a half minutes.

As a result, the spacecraft passed 821 miles above the Moon and is now traveling at 5,102 mph.

This outbound powered flyby burn is one of the two maneuvers Orion needs to execute to enter the distant retrograde orbit around the Moon, which will take it 40,000 miles past it and put it on a return journey to Earth.

To put Orion's one-week stay in the Moon's distant retrograde orbit to better use, it will test its spacecraft systems to know whether they are working as intended.

NASA believes Orion will enter the distant retrograde orbit insertion burn on Nov. 25 with the second maneuver. The latest orbital maneuvering system engine burn took the spacecraft close enough to the lunar surface to use the Moon's gravity to pull it around the moon and enter its distant retrograde orbit, per Space.com.

People who are insterested in watching Orion's distant retrograde orbit insertion burn can do so on NASA TV on Nov. 26 at 4:30 PM, with the burn set at 4:52 pm EST.

The journey to make the lunar flyby possible has been an educational one, to say the least. NASA mentioned in a separate blog post that the Orion spacecraft completed four orbital trajectory correction burns for it to remain on course.

The first three correction burns allowed NASA experts to fire all three thruster types on Orion. For the first burn, NASA used the large orbital maneuvering system engine, while the second gave the space agency the chance to use the small reaction control system thrusters.

Finally, NASA used Orion's medium-sized auxiliary engines to correct the spacecraft's trajectory. During this time, NASA was able to take pictures of the Moon as Orion passes by, along with some selfies of the Earth and Moon at the same time.

NASA's Reaction To Orion's Progress

Judd Frieling, flight director at NASA's Johnson Space Center, revealed in a briefing held on Nov. 21 that the Orion mission team members are excited with the spacecraft's current performance after its flyby.

Meanwhile, Howard Hu, the Orion program manager, praised the team for its "really good performance" in its mission's subsystems and systems.

He also added that Nov. 21 is a great day as they feel excited about the information coming from Orion to the point that they feel they're not at NASA to work.