Orion spacecraft enters distant retrograde orbit around the moon

The Nitya world Photo Credit : Getty Images

As the Orion spacecraft enters a long retrograde orbit around the moon, it begins to slowly move away from the satellite.

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The unmanned spacecraft will serve as a test bed for systems and hardware in preparation for the upcoming crewed missions, Artemis II and Artemis III,

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which will orbit the moon and land on its surface. On the 25th of November, Orion used its engines for almost 1.5 minutes to enter this orbit.

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Orion is on a far retrograde orbit, which means that it is travelling around the moon counter to the direction in which the moon orbits the Earth. This puts Orion at a distance of about 40,000 miles from the moon.

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This fuel-saving orbit is far from the moon, allowing the spacecraft to complete half an orbit around the moon in a week before returning to Earth.

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