The Orion spacecraft left the lunar orbit and began to fly to Earth - a splashdown is scheduled for December 11

The Orion spacecraft successfully completed most of the objectives of the Artemis I mission.

What is known

As it was

On December 1 at 23:53 (EET), on the 16th day of the Artemis I mission, the Orion capsule with mannequins on board descended from lunar orbit.To perform the maneuver, the spacecraft activated its main engines, which worked for about two minutes.

One of the tasks of Orion, about which there is littleIt was said that there was a collection of information on the intensity of radiation in space. At the end of November, the spacecraft entered a deep retrograde orbit around the Moon, more than 434,000 km away from the Earth, which is a record.

At this distance, the magnetic field of our planetunable to protect the crew and equipment from radiation. To collect data, specialists from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) equipped mannequins with radioactive radiation sensors.

December 5 at 18:43 (EET) Orion will pass 128 km from the Moon. On December 11, the spacecraft will splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. The capsule will enter the Earth's atmosphere at high speed, allowing the test of a heat shield that has not been used since the first Apollo lunar program.