April 2 (UPI) — The Artemis II astronauts have completed their perigee raise burn as part of a planned orbital adjustment and are headed back into a four-hour rest period, NASA said.
After an earlier rest period, the astronauts were awakened at 7:06 a.m. EDT for the perigee burn. NASA played the song “Sleepyhead” by Young and Sick to wake them up.
In the perigee burn, the spacecraft lit its main engine for 43 seconds, which raised the lowest point of its orbit. This helps prevent the craft from re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere. It also refines the trajectory of the craft as it circles Earth. It put Orion into a stable high-Earth orbit, which aligns with its path to the moon.
The crew will now have another four-and-a-half-hour rest period, then they will be awakened to start their first full day in space.
Later today, the mission management team will have its first meeting of the mission to assess the spacecraft’s systems and will give its approval for the upcoming translunar injection burn. That burn will send astronauts out of Earth’s orbit and toward the Moon for the first time in 50 years. It will last just over six minutes and will speed the craft to escape Earth’s gravitational pull.
The launch on Wednesday evening began at 6:35 p.m. EDT from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Soon after launch, Wiseman told operators on the ground, “We have a beautiful moonrise, we’re headed right at it.”
There was a small glitch in the craft’s space toilet, Space.com reported.
“The toilet fan is reported to be jammed,” NASA spokesperson Gary Jordan said during live mission commentary. “Now the ground teams are coming up with instructions on how to get into the fan and clear that area to revive the toilet for the mission.”
NASA Director of Flight Operations Norm Knight told reporters that the problem was a controller issue on the toilet in urine collection. The astronauts were able to use a backup system until the engineers fixed the problem before their first rest period.
About 9 minutes after the launch, the crew entered Earth’s orbit, traveling about 15,000 mph. They are expected to enter the moon’s orbit in about six days, travel around it and then return to Earth.
The four-person crew are: NASA’s Commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen.
