Posted on 11/23/2022 2:11:11 PM PST by BenLurkin
NASA unexpectedly lost contact with its moonbound Orion capsule early Wednesday morning (Nov. 23), for reasons that remain unclear.
Mission controllers lost communication with Orion at 1:09 a.m. EST (0609 GMT) while reconfiguring a link between the capsule and the Deep Space Network, the set of radio dishes that NASA uses to talk to its farflung spacecraft.
Orion is gearing up for a crucial maneuver: It's scheduled to perform an engine burn on Friday (Nov. 25) that will insert the capsule into orbit around the moon. If all goes well, Orion will stay in that orbit for about a week, then head back toward Earth on Dec. 1.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
No, I don’t think that is the reason for the signal loss. Orion is along way away and its transmitter is not terribly powerful, hence the dish antennas. There are many sources of interference that cam cause signal loss.
Are you being facetious? Signal loss was pretty common during Apollo missions. Apollo transmitters were only 20 watt devices, pretty puny for the distances involved. Hence the enormous dishes at the ground stations.
NASA didn’t design or build any of the hardware. That was, and is now, accomplished by contractors.
Those returnable boosters are not as efficient as disposables. A great deal of fuel must be retained for the descent.
Yup. Some of the Apollo missions had brief LOC because their high gain antennas were not aligned properly.
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