The Integrity, the name of the Orion capsule carrying Artemis II astronauts on a trip around the moon, has left Earth’s orbit. NASA has announced that it has successfully completed a key burn of Orion’s main engine. That six-minute firing of the engine provided approximately 6,000 pounds of thrust, which gave the spacecraft the acceleration it needed to set it on its path to the moon. “Today, for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972, humans have departed Earth orbit,” said Dr. Lori Glaze from NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Orion is operating with crew for the first time in space, and we are gathering critical data, and learning from each step.” Commander Reid Wiseman called seeing “the entire globe from pole to pole” after leaving Earth’s orbit a “spectacular momen [...]
We got to share in a rare moment of collective awe this week as four astronauts blasted off toward the moon, beginning a 10-day journey that will take them farther from Earth than any humans have trav [...]
Now that Artemis II is all wrapped up, NASA has begun its post-game performance analyses of all the systems that worked together to get four astronauts safely to the moon and back earlier this month. [...]
At the start of the month, Elon Musk announced that two of his companies — SpaceX and xAI — were merging, and would jointly launch a constellation of 1 million satellites to operate as orbital d [...]