NASA’s Orion spacecraft had a brief power problem on Sunday (December 4) just hours before successfully completing a crucial engine burn near the moon.
A power unit on the dash. orion spacecraft turned off four devices “responsible for down power” that connect to the Artemis 1 vehicle’s propulsion and heating subsystems, NASA officials wrote in a statement (opens in a new tab). But the mission staff quickly put together a solution and the mission continues, the statement stressed.
“Teams confirmed the system was healthy and successfully repowered downstream components,” agency officials wrote in the statement, released late Sunday. “There was no power interruption to any critical systems, and there were no adverse effects on Orion’s navigation or communication.”
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Despite the hiccups, Orion seemed to navigate through a critical engine burn near Moon on Monday (December 5) to put her on course for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on December 2. 11. The problem occurred shortly after a different track burn on Sunday that began at 11:43 am EST (1643 GMT), and NASA is investigating the cause.
The power failure was identified shortly after Orion re-contacted with NASA’s Deep Space Network at 1:41 pm EST (18:41 GMT) on Sunday, following a planned power outage; Orion is periodically out of contact with Earth as it flies on the back of the moon, where it cannot transmit signals to our planet’s antennae.
NASA engineers aren’t sure if the problem is related to a previous problem with the devices, which are called umbilical latching current limiters. On flight day 5 of the mission, around November 1. 21, one of the eight open devices (opens in a new tab) without a command. The engineers ordered the device to shut down and had no problem doing so, authorities said at the time.
Orion is on a journey to fix problems like this before the first manned mission, which is expected to be mugwort 2 in 2024 or so. The flight has had other minor problems, such as temporary glitches in the capsule’s random access memory and a problem during which Orion lost contact with Earth. for 47 minutes.
However, Artemis 1 has so far met all of its required primary mission milestones since its launch on November 1. sixteen.
Elizabeth Howell is co-author of “Why am I taller? (opens in a new tab)?” (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book on space medicine. Follow her on Twitter @howellspace (opens in a new tab). Follow us on Twitter @spacedot.com (opens in a new tab) either Facebook (opens in a new tab).
