The Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft saw a power drop hours before the lunar flyby
NASA’s Orion spacecraft experienced a brief power problem on Sunday (Dec. 4) just hours before successfully completing a crucial engine burn near the moon.
A power unit on board the Orion spacecraft shut down four “downstream power responsible” devices that connect to the Artemis 1 vehicle’s propulsion and heating subsystems, NASA officials said he wrote in a statement (opens in a new tab). But mission staff quickly put in place a solution and the mission continues, the statement stressed.
“Crews confirmed the system was healthy and successfully repowered downstream components,” agency officials wrote in the statement, released Sunday afternoon. “There was no disruption of power to any critical systems and there were no adverse effects to Orion’s navigation or communication.”
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Despite the hiccup, Orion seemed to be sailing for crucial engine burn Close to moon Monday (Dec. 5) to launch it for a splash in the Pacific Ocean on Dec. 11. The problem occurred shortly after a different trajectory burn on Sunday that began at 11:43 a.m. EST (1643 GMT), and NASA is investigating the cause.
The electrical failure was identified shortly after Orion reconnected with NASA’s Deep Space Network at 1:41 p.m. EST (1841 GMT) on Sunday, following a planned power outage; Orion is periodically out of contact with Earth as it flies behind the Moon, where it cannot transmit signals to our planet’s antennas.
NASA engineers aren’t sure if the problem is related to an earlier problem with the devices, which are called umbilical blocking current limiters. On the 5th flight day of the mission, around November 21st, one of the eight open devices (opens in a new tab) without command Engineers ordered the device to shut down and had no problem doing so, officials said at the time.
Orion is on a journey to iron out kinks like this before the first manned mission, which is expected to be Artemis 2 in 2024 or so. The flight has had other minor problems, including temporary failures in the capsule’s random access memory and an issue during which Orion came into contact with Earth. for 47 minutes.
However, Artemis 1 has so far hit all the required major mission milestones since its November 16 launch.
Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of “Why am I taller? (opens in a new tab)?” (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book about space medicine. Follow her on Twitter @howellspace (opens in a new tab). follow us on twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in a new tab) or Facebook (opens in a new tab).
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