NASA's Artemis 1 tracking site is like flying with Orion to the Moon

Take off with NASA’s latest lunar mission on a tracking site the agency just launched.

Artemis 1First flight Artemis programLaunched early Wednesday morning (November 16). a Space launch system The missile, on its first ever mission, successfully dispatched an unmanned rocket Orion spacecraft towards the moon.

Even though the launch is over, you can continue to follow the nearly month-long task in real time on this NASA website (Opens in a new tab). If you like, you can download track data to create your own apps, the agency said.

The primary website shows an animation of Orion in space along with the mission’s elapsed time, capsule velocity, and its distance from Earth and the Moon. You can change the view of the Orion spacecraft by rotating the camera, cycle through four cameras with a solar array wing, or switch between views of the mission’s trajectory so far. You can also stare at the spacecraft up close.

Pictures: Stunning views of the emergence of NASA’s Artemis 1 moon rocket

“Ephemeris data can be used to track Orion with your spaceflight program’s app or telescope. It can also be used to create a physics model, animation, visualization, tracking app, or other conceivable project,” said NASA writer Erica Peters. blog post (Opens in a new tab) on Tumblr.

NASA said in a journal separate post (Opens in a new tab) About the project.

The data visible online is the same as the data generated by a group within NASA’s Mission Control Console at Johnson Space Center in Houston. The group, called Flight Dynamics Operations (FDO), is responsible for “tracking where the spacecraft is and where it will be,” Peters said.

FDO is gaining information from tracking Orion on the Deep Space Network, three massive satellite dishes on Earth that enable communication with NASA missions across the solar system. Between the tracking information received and the models generated by FDO, the team aims to provide precision trajectory for Orion to feed back to the Artemis flight controllers.

“Accurate trajectory is essential to achieving mission objectives, maintaining communications links, illumination, trajectory adjustment, and more,” added Peters.

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 @employee (Opens in a new tab). Follow us on Twitter @employee (Opens in a new tab) or Facebook (Opens in a new tab).