NASA's Orion spacecraft of Artemis 1 was out of contact for 47 minutes
Since launching toward the moon on NASA's Artemis 1 mission last Wednesday, Nov. 16, the uncrewed Orion spacecraft has been performing well.
But, on Wednesday (Nov. 23) came a blip: For unknown reasons, NASA unexpectedly lost contact with its moon-bound Orion capsule.
NASA’s Mission Control Center unexpectedly lost data to and from the spacecraft for 47 minutes while reconfiguring the communication link between Orion and Deep Space Network overnight.
For 47 minutes, early Wednesday morning (Nov. 23) at 12:09 a.m. CST, NASA lost contact with the Orion spacecraft of Artemis 1.
But now, everything seems to be OK. The unexpected loss of communication with Orion is restored.
NASA officials stated in an update on Wednesday that "The reconfiguration has been conducted successfully several times in the last few days, and the team is investigating the cause of the loss of signal."
They also wrote,
"The team resolved the issue with a reconfiguration on the ground side."
"Engineers are examining data from the event to help determine what happened, and the command and data handling officer will be downlinking data recorded onboard Orion during the outage to include in that assessment."
The communication outage lasted 47 minutes, and Orion came out in fine condition; the Orion spacecraft is healthy and showed no signs of damage, according to NASA officials.
Orion is preparing for an important operation: On Friday, November 25, it is planned to perform an engine burn that will insert the spacecraft into orbit around the moon.
If all goes according to plan, Orion will remain in that orbit for about a week, then head back toward Earth on December 1.
On December 11, the spacecraft will arrive here with a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast.
Artemis 1 serves as a shakeout cruise for Orion and NASA's Space Launch System, it is the most powerful rocket to ever fly successfully.
In 2024, the duo of Orion and SLS are expected to fly astronauts for the first time on Artemis 2, which will send a crewed Orion around the moon.
With Artemis missions, NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before.