10 Days in Orion

During NASA’s Artemis II mission to the Moon, four astronauts will live and work inside the Orion spacecraft after launching atop the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket. The crew will test Orion’s systems throughout their 10-day mission to ensure the spacecraft can keep astronauts safe and healthy in deep space. Over the course of their mission, the crew will check out Orion’s critical life support and medical systems, including the potable water dispenser, suitcase-style food warmer, flywheel exercise device, and toilet. They’ll also evaluate their sleeping environment, practice quickly donning their suits for emergencies, and inspect the radiation shelter designed for solar particle events, among other activities. This is 10 days in Orion. Credit: NASA Writer: Erika Peters Editor: Phil Sexton Producers: Rad Sinyak, Erika Peters Join NASA as we go forward to the Moon and on to Mars -- discover the latest on Earth, the Solar System and beyond with a weekly update in your inbox. Subscribe at: https://www.nasa.gov/subscribe

What is said in the film

Artemis II is our first crewed mission back to the Moon since the Apollo program. A lot of the focus of Artemis II is really checking out systems to be sure that we're ready and well positioned for continued human exploration. My name is Susan Baggerman, and I'm the chief health and performance officer for the Orion program and the Artemis II mission. And this is ten days in Orion. For this mission, the crew will launch in the Orion spacecraft on top of the Space Launch System rocket or the SLS rocket.

Once they've launched and achieved orbit shortly after that, they'll perform what's called an apogee raise burn. And that's basically to put them into a high Earth orbit, which is critically important for this flight, because it gives the crew 24 hours where they can orbit and check out some of the key systems, but also still be close enough that we could return them to Earth if something were to happen. One of their first priorities is conducting a rendezvous and prox ops demonstration. This is basically just a chance to check out the Orion handling qualities, and what it would be like to dock to another spacecraft. They'll continue on checking out many of the different critical Orion systems.

They'll be looking at things like oxygen levels within the vehicle, how the CO2 scrubbing system is performing. Check out some of the critical medical systems, and be sure that we understand how the crew would do that successfully within the volume of Orion. We also have, of course, systems to feed the crew. They have a potable water dispenser that they'll check out. And then we also have a food warmer.

Kind of looks like a suitcase that the crew can use to heat their food. They're also going to check out the flywheel system. We'll have the crew perform some initial exercises. Part of that is to ensure that the flywheel is actually working, but part of it is actually to be sure that our environmental control systems are actually working. For sleeping, the crew will sleep in sleeping bags.

Some crew members like to be very, like, tightly bound up, and some like to float very free. For the most part, they can sleep wherever they want within the Orion vehicle. They'll attempt things that may seem pretty easy to do here on Earth, but that are much harder to do with microgravity. They'll use the toilet for the first time, and be sure that it's able to flush. I'm Melissa McKinley.

I'm the project manager for the UWMS, the universal waste management system. Going to the bathroom without the aid of gravity, without water to collect the waste. It's harder than you would think. So we use airflow to help entrain the waste into packaging to collect it. And help the crew member deposit the waste away from their bodies.

It is really important that we make it easy as we can for crew and make it comfortable for them, because it is a vital part of exploration. I'm Romeo Garza. I am the deputy system manager for the Orion communication and tracking system here at Johnson Space Center. While we're in the high Earth orbit, there's a couple of things we really want to check out before we commit to going all the way to the Moon. First one is just success in communicating with the Deep Space Network.

This is a ground network that provides a lot of capability for us to be able to tie it back and forth as we go further and further away from the Earth. Step two is checking out our emergency comm system. The idea is that if the primary system communication system fails, this emergency communication system will be able to allow us to continue talking with the crew and navigate successfully without the primary system. Once the crew is completed that high Earth orbit and checked out all of the systems, then we'll commit to what's called the trans lunar injection. And this is basically the burn that commits us to the Moon while they're on their journey.

They'll do some testing that they quickly don their suit pressure check it, and be sure that they're able to execute that, just to be sure that we would be ready in the future for an emergency. They'll also check out our radiation shelter. If we were to have a solar particle event, we would be asking them to take stowage out of the stowage bay and put it in some specific locations on the vehicle, basically for it to serve as shielding. After completing this journey of over 685,000 miles around the Moon, the crew will splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego. They'll be greeted by the Navy, who will recover the vessel and most importantly, recover the crew.

This mission has been an absolute monumental effort by a large team of people within the human health and performance area. All of our efforts, and all of the engineering and the medical discipline that was poured into this mission, really resulted in being able to see those four crew members, our friends, return safely to the Earth and back to their families.

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