NASA astronauts show how to fly the lunar-bound Orion spacecraft

Ever wondered how to fly a spacecraft? Well, you’re in luck then, as NASA has just shared a video with lots of juicy details on how to fly the Orion spacecraft.

Orion has already traveled around the moon once, in the Artemis I mission in 2022. But that flight was crewless. Next, the spacecraft will carry four astronauts around the moon in the Artemis II mission currently scheduled for 2026.

While Orion is built to fly with a high level of autonomy, it also allows for human control and intervention, and in NASA’s video, Artemis II astronauts Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover chat about how they’ll be putting the spacecraft through its paces during next year’s mission.

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To operate Orion’s software, for example, the astronauts will use the Cursor Control Device (CCD), a handheld gadget described by Glover as “the primary way to interact with the spacecraft.” The CCD does what it says on the tin, allowing the astronauts to move the cursor around, between displays if necessary, and interact with various fields of data.

“There is far more information on these displays than we will need to to fly this spacecraft normally,” Wiseman says, “But if a system goes off, if something goes wrong, we can dig down into the lowest levels of the computer, of all the systems here, and we can take a look to see what’s failed [and] talk to Mission Control in Houston.”

Next year’s lunar adventure will see the Orion and its crew flying close to the moon and well beyond it before returning to Earth. During the mission, Wiseman and Glover will perform a key test called the “proximity operations demonstration,” which will involve the pair using Orion’s different displays and controls to evaluate the handling qualities of the spacecraft. For example, the video highlights some of the spacecraft’s main piloting devices such as the Rotational Hand Controller and the Translational Hand Controller, which take care of Orion’s pitch, roll, and yaw, as well as its up/down, left/right, and in/out movement.

“Right next to the displays, you see switches and toggles and dials, we call those switch interface panels,” Glover says. “If the rotational and translational hand controllers didn’t work, we also have a backup to a set of switches.”

The Artemis II crewmembers have been in training for the highly anticipated mission since April 2023. It had been scheduled to launch this year but was delayed as more time is needed to resolve some technical issues with the Orion spacecraft. The Artemis III mission to put NASA astronauts back on the moon has also been delayed by a year and is currently targeted for 2027.