After a successful splashdown of the Orion spacecraft in the Pacific Ocean, NASA Administrator and former Senator Bill Nelson shared that his agency plans to go to Mars by the end of 2030. Senator Nelson struck an upbeat tone after NASA had a great Artemis 1 mission, and the remarks were made during a post-splashdown press conference, in which he also shared details for SpaceX’s Starship lunar lander. The event was attended by several agency officials, including Michael Sarafin, NASA’s Artemis 1 mission manager, who shared his final thoughts on Orion’s performance as it entered the Earth at breakneck speeds for a successful landing.
Orion Did Not Present Any Problems During Reentry Outlines NASA Official
Throughout its journey to the Moon and back, Orion performed better than NASA engineers had initially expected. The spacecraft’s power generation, done through solar panels, generated more power than expected. As part of the mission, NASA added additional test objectives to stress the vehicle and learn more about its performance for future missions. The next Artemis mission will involve a crew, and not only will NASA use the data for the next mission, but it will also make changes to the ship. These changes will involve hand controllers, the life support system, and displays - all of which will enable the crew to monitor and control the spacecraft. However, the crew spacecraft will reuse several components from the ship that just landed today. These include antennas, control units and GPS receivers. After today’s landing, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson revealed that his agency plans Mars missions by the end of 2030. Administrator Nelson also shared crucial details about SpaceX’s Starship lunar lander. This is currently the only vehicle that has been chosen by NASA to land humans on the Moon as part of the Artemis program. Commenting on Starship’s progress, he revealed that: NASA’s Artemis 1 mission manager, Michael Sarafin, also shared the final performance of the spaceship during today’s reentry and landing. He explained that: Their plan is to do an uncrewed landing in 23, late 23, that’s a year from now! And then to do the crewed landing in late 24. So slips are always possible because, it’s a brand new system, but they have been quite impressive in what they have done with other systems. NASA will now evaluate data from Orion over the next couple of months to reach final conclusions about its performance. It aims to pick the Artemis II crew early next year. The team did leave, as part of flight test objectives, leave the vehicle powered for two hours post splashdown to gather thermal soak back data; as we came through the Earth’s atmosphere the vehicle saw temperatures outside of it nearing 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That soaks back into the vehicle structure, we did collect data by having an extended power up on the surface of the ocean. All of that was fine, all of the parachute deployments were fine.
