In this video from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen explains how the Artemis 2 crew will pilot the Orion crew spacecraft.
The Orion spacecraft was designed to fly autonomously and manually. During the mission there will be times when the Orion spacecraft will autonomously but each crew member will get experience at piloting the spacecraft manually.
Video transcript
“So you need two hand controllers to fly it manually. And you float into one of these two seats, and then you can look out the window and you can fly the spacecraft. It’s really important to know where you are, especially when you’re trying to go so far away, out to the Moon, approximately 400,000 km away, hit these precise orbital positions so that you (A) don’t hit the Moon, but also don’t go too far out and get lost in space. And so, navigation is really important.
So two ways to know where we are. One is Earth can tell us; they can use all of their systems that we have here on Earth to track the capsule, and then they can send us updated information on where we are and how fast we’re going and in what direction. The other way is for us to use the stars. And so we have special systems on board the capsule here that can take imagery from the stars, and they can also look at the position of the Moon and based on the date, where the shadow of the Moon is, and we can use all that information to figure out where we are in space and how fast we’re going. And so, that’s kind of neat that we use the stars to help us understand where we are in space.
Now when it comes to manoeuvring the spacecraft, we actually can manually pilot the spacecraft. Obviously it can be done through automation, because Artemis I flew without a crew on it. But on this mission, whenever you have crew on it, you want to have backup options where if for some reason the automation doesn’t work, we want to still be able to dock with the spacecraft so that future Artemis crews could come home when they have to dock with their vehicle to get back from the Moon, for example.
And so, this is a hand controller, just like a joystick for flying a flight simulator. We installed this here in the seat, and we can use it to manually control the vehicle. We have another hand controller on here for the other axes because it’s not like an airplane where you just need a control stick – you actually need to be able to translate in space as well. So you need two hand controllers to fly it manually. And you float into one of these two seats, and then you can look out the window and you can fly the spacecraft.”
NASA: How to fly Orion
NASA also published a video on how the astronauts will fly Orion providing insights including a key manual maneuver early in the mission.
