Space and Physics
PUBLISHED
On Sunday, December 11, the Orion spacecraft will splash down in the Pacific Ocean, just off the coast of California. It is now well on its way back to Earth, and people worldwide have been able to use telescopes to see the little vehicle as it returns to us.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.The team at The Virtual Telescope Project managed to capture it as well, when the spacecraft was 382,000 kilometers (237,364 miles) away, roughly the average distance between Earth and the Moon. The Virtual Telescope will also do another live session on December 10, to catch it just before reentry. And it will be quite a reentry.
Orion will attempt a skip reentry, the first time a human-grade vehicle will do such a maneuver. The craft will bounce on the atmosphere once like a pebble on a lake, before coming down at the specific point for recovery. The exact details for the splashdown will be shared by NASA in a press conference later tonight.
On Saturday, ahead of the splashdown, NASA will also reveal all the hidden Easter eggs inside Orion's capsule.
