Posted on 12/12/2022 1:25:50 PM PST by texas booster
The Orion spacecraft has been secured in the well deck of the USS Portland. The ship will soon begin its trip back to U.S. Naval Base San Diego, where engineers will remove Orion from the ship in preparation for transport back to Kennedy Space Center in Florida for post-flight analysis.
Upon Orion’s successful splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of Baja California at 9:40 PST/12:40 EST Dec. 11, flight controllers in mission control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston spent about two hours performing tests in open water to gather additional data about the spacecraft, including on its thermal properties after enduring the searing heat of re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere. Recovery personnel also spent time collecting detailed imagery of the spacecraft before beginning to pull the capsule into the USS Portland’s well deck.
The recovery process involved divers attaching a cable called a winch line and several additional tending lines attached to the crew module. The winch was used to pull Orion into a specially designed cradle inside the ship’s well deck and the other lines were used to control the motion of the spacecraft. The recovery team consists of personnel and assets from the U.S. Department of Defense, including Navy amphibious specialists and Space Force weather specialists, and engineers and technicians from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Johnson Space Center in Houston, and Lockheed Martin Space Operations.
Yes, that’s what I’ve been saying.
Orion was the first to circle the moon UNMANNED and return to earth.
Supporting you, not arguing.
From my perspective SLS is a nightmare, but the Orion spacecraft is pretty cool.
Thanks for the support.
I’m pleasantly surprised to see that NASA can still perform. I watched mission control and all I saw was white guys doing the work. But every single NASA presentation in front of a camera was women or POCs. Rather sad.
They put people in positions of their competence ...
That was my take-away.
Looks in far better shape than Apollo after re-entry.
Live tracking was available on 2 or 3 different YouTube channels. It was actually quite fun to watch. Some of them even included live cameras from onboard Orion.
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