April 26, 2024

Artemis I Mission: Unexpected Loss of Communication With Orion Spacecraft

Artists impression of Orion over the Moon. Orion is NASAs next spacecraft to send people into area. It is developed to send astronauts further into space than ever previously, beyond the Moon to asteroids and even Mars. Credit: NASA/ESA/ATG Medialab

By NASA
November 23, 2022

Today, NASAs Mission Control Center at the agencys Johnson Space Center in Houston unexpectedly lost information to and from the spacecraft at 12:09 a.m. CST. The interaction blackout lasted for 47 minutes and began while mission controllers were reconfiguring the interaction link in between Orion and Deep Space Network over night.
Over the previous few days, the reconfiguration has actually been conducted successfully several times, and so the team is examining the cause of the loss of signal this time. There was no impact to Orion, and the spacecraft remains in a healthy configuration.