Today we're in the mission evaluation room or the here for the Orion spacecraft. Our main job is we're the engineering backroom support to the flight control team. We do a lot of monitoring of various disciplines on the vehicle. I particularly monitor a member of the rendezvous, proximity operations and docking console or the Arpad console, and we're responsible for various flight tests that take place during the mission that helped by down risk for our future docking missions with HLS on Artemis three for the pod console.
We're here on flight day two now, but yesterday was a very large day for us. We had both the proximity operations FTO and a bearing FTO that took place so shortly after about 3.5 hours into the mission, the crew kicked off an automated maneuver that then turned them around to face back towards the IC with their docking camera.
And then at that point, they approached into ten meters from the IC and use the hand controllers, the translational hand control and rotational hand controller on the vehicle, along with our docking camera displayed on their crew displays to pilot the vehicle, similar to how they would in a manual docking scenario on future Artemis missions. As part of that, we collected a lot of data that will help us by down the risk and help us also set up simulations, environments that allow us to train the crew better going forward and give them a better environment that's more realistic to what they expect on orbit.
Sure, our console actually has kind of two different roles. One of them is to monitor the operations that are taking place, making sure that the procedure is being executed properly, the crews using the vehicle the way we'd like, and that the vehicle is supporting the crew and doing their operations. Also, we have experts on the rendezvous sensors that we were using.
So for example, yesterday there were two team members on from our docking camera and compact flight computer team. And so they were also monitoring the performance of that sensor and providing feedback and making sure that they're also collecting the data that we need from them. We think it went very well. We got a lot of positive feedback from the crew, real time over the loops, which was really exciting.
And then we think we collected a very good data set that will help us going forward. Sure. I think when the crew first flipped the vehicle over and then we acquired the IPS in the docking camera view, that was super exciting just to see it for in real life for the first time on orbit with humans involved. After doing just countless hours of simulation and analysis on that same exact scenario, to see it for real for the first time was really awesome.
It was exciting. The murder as a whole got really excited, but we were hyper focused on our console just because it's kind of like it was our, you know, our Super Bowl yesterday. And so it was a lot of fun to hear everybody else get excited. But then at the same time kind of try and remain focused on our task at hand.
We have a lot of docking camera tests that'll come up in the next couple of days. We have one more manual piloting task, where the crew will control the vehicle at the RHC relative to a star, and then also we're evaluating our docking camera through a different flight test that will allow us to buy down the risk going into three for using it as a sensor, as the pod console will get to execute the D part of our name and do docking at least once on Artemis three.
And so that's very exciting. And then obviously hopefully executing it as well on Artemis four. To then support a lunar landing would be a great highlight. Yeah, I think it's just very exciting to finally see Artemis two happen. And then the fast cadence that we're moving towards Artemis three and Artemis four, especially in the face of flight. Like that's an exciting time.
I'm very happy to be here.
My name is Quinn Jones and I work on the MTL console, which is a mechanism TPS and listen and console. It's mainly a general structures console and my discipline is loads of dynamics. I'm the discipline lead for listen, and one of the big things that we look at is what the vehicle loading will be during the launch and ascent.
So we we look at the trajectory parameters and the environments of the launch day and try to estimate what kind of loads will be. Okay. We'll see. And if it exceeds any of our structural capability on the spacecraft when you're flying, there's going to be lots of different things pushing up against you, like the air pressure. And when you thrust the thrust from the rocket engines, they're going to be pushing against our Orion vehicle.
And so we make sure that all of those different loads or things that are pushing on the vehicle are not going to break our vehicle. So we saw a really good launch. That was very nice. Everything went according to plan. We saw our solar arrays. We have to check the solar arrays that when they deploy and that they don't go under any like unexpected loading.
And they didn't. They deploy beautifully. So that was very exciting. And and that all the configuration of the vehicle was in the right orientation for all of the burns and events that we're going to do. And so we just track that to make sure that nothing funny is happening. And there's not going to be any weird loads that we weren't expecting.
One of the development flight test objectives that our discipline does at the console is the exercise flywheel device testing. And so when the crew exercises and they have to exercise every day, they impart loads on the vehicle. And the flywheel is their exercise device. And so when they practice on the ground and we measured how they exercise and we make sure that they're not going to do anything that's going to cause any of our solar arrays to bounce around in a way that's not good and will, you know, contribute to some structural loading.
The problem is, we don't know if when they do it on the ground, it's going to be the same on this flywheel as when they do it in space. And so we have asked the crew to put some accelerometers on the flywheel when they exercise to measure the data, measure the acceleration so that we can get the data to check and make sure that the way we thought they were going to exercise on the ground matches how they're exercising in space.
So we're really looking forward to getting that data. So we do ground testing with the crew, exercising and with the flywheel device to make sure we understand how they're going to exercise and put loads into to the vehicle. And so what we don't know is whether the when the exercise in the space, the flywheel device sees the loading in the same way as it does on the ground.
So we've asked the crew to add some accelerometers when they exercise and to collect data for us so that we can get that downloaded, downloaded data and compare and confirm that how we expect them to exercise is what it looks like in space. Sure, we have a solar array modal survey, which is where we we fire some jets and see how the solar arrays are going to move, and so we can see what kind of movement to expect.
And hopefully it will be the same as when we did this for our Ms. one. And so we're looking forward to confirming that. And that way we can update our models and reduce uncertainty as we proceed in all these missions. I'll be really excited to see some of our data that we have. We have instrumentation in the vehicle, and I'm really excited to see some of that data and to confirm some of the things where we have ground data for, but it doesn't, you know, it's not the same as getting real in-flight data.
So once we get the in-flight data and can compare and and confirm what some of our assumptions were that were based on, you know, testing and textbooks and confirming that in space, that's I'm excited for that. And I'm excited to see humans go around the moon. Well, we're going to be able to update some of our models and update some of our expectations based on our data.
And in our next flight, we're hopefully going to be docking with another vehicle in space, and we'll use a lot of the information we know to do that successfully. So I'm very excited to see that happen. Just it's been so exciting. The energy in this room was amazing. Everyone was just working like like so well together. It was just beautiful.
It was just beautiful. It's just been a long time coming and you just keep chugging along and don't give up. And you get to experience a day like yesterday.
My name is Amy Killeen. I'm the system manager for Orion's communication and tracking team. The council I'm supporting is the Communication and Tracking Council. Yeah. So under a communication and tracking team were responsible for all of our communication systems. We are responsible for the audio system as well as the video system. All right. So the communication and tracking team is responsible for all the communication systems on Orion as well as the audio system which is the audio you will hear with the crew.
And we also support the video system which provides the imagery and photographies videos that you see that comes down to earth. Yeah. So on flight day one we do early emergency comm checkout, and that is to check out the system that will provide audio with the crew. If the primaries communication system happens to fail, the crew performs the communication checkouts.
So what the crew does is they have a knob on their control panel that they switch to turn on the emergency comp system, and we do an audio checkout with the crew and all that performs successfully on the flight day one. Yes. So on the shift today, we're actually going to be checking out an algorithm called set mode.
Set stands for search, acquire and track. This algorithm is intended to be used when if the vehicle losses navigation state, or we get into a situation where we have an extended loss of com with a crew. So we monitor all our hardware and make sure they're performing as expected. We also are collecting data for our post-flight performance analysis.
One of the things that we're monitoring closely is our audio system. This is a new set of hardware for Artemis two because we do not have crew on board for Artemis one. Audio is characterized by speech intelligibility testing on the ground. However, audio performance can vary a lot. And it can vary from crew to crew, and it also has a lot of external factors that could impact audio performance, such as cabin fans going or exercise machines going on.
So we really want to get the crew's feedback on how the audio is working for them, and that will feed directly back into our designs and improvements for our future design. Yeah, I think all our systems are very healthy right now. In performing as we expected, our hardware is showing good performance.
My name is Lorelei. Lorelei Kirk. We are in the Orion. Murr and I work at the imagery console here in the mirror. We coordinate and track and report on the imagery findings and activities on board Orion, and also on the ground prelaunch and post-launch or post landing, I should say. So. We are currently looking at forward to lunar, the lunar flyby.
We've got that coming up. That's going to be very exciting and a lot of work for us. We have POW events every day that we watch to make sure that those are going off, but mostly we are involved in the engineering imagery portion. So we are watching essentially every system on Orion to ensure that it's operating correctly. If there's ever any problems.
Usually the first question they have is is there a video of it? So then we go in and acquire a video, and we have to bring it down to the earth so that the flight control team can then review it and make determinations on. We have somewhere in excess of 30 cameras on the vehicle currently. Some of them are actually vehicle mounted.
They're mounted on the camera on the vehicle. Excuse me, they're mounted on the vehicle. And those are our primary primarily what we use for engineering imagery. So we have one on the tip of each solar array wing. And we have three in the cabin. Two of them look out the windows. One of them looks into the cabin at the display units.
Then you might have seen that during the pre-launch so you can see what the display units are doing. Then we also have cameras. We have the docking camera. That's a gene and C sensor that they used for the rendezvous. We have a bunch of handheld cameras. They've got iPhones. They've got the Nat Geo cameras that are GoPros. They have another little handheld GoPro.
And the one that I love the most is the Nikon D5. We have that one and that one is it's a it's tried and true. You know, I've been working in space for 39 years, so I've seen and worked on most of the systems that both commercial and government systems, launch systems and launches are always spectacular for me.
You know, I used to my first job was doing liftoff clearances for space shuttle. I came and right for challenger. So, you know, I just launches and this one was really special. Since then, we've done some really spectacular imagery. We've gotten handheld from my, again, my favorite, the Nikon D5 images of Earth that, you know, I don't remember seeing ones that have been so clear, even though at least not from that altitude, because we're higher than the stations.
So we haven't gotten stuff like that before. We should see some really good stuff from the moon too. So but yeah, that's that's really what I've had the most fun with. The lunar flyby has been very challenging for us, both in trying to meet the science needs, because they want very good imagery, the hand that the saws are not meant for, that kind of imagery.
They're meant to look at Orion itself so they don't have the focal length necessary to really image the the moon. I mean, we got good images for Artemis one, but they weren't as good as they could have been. So the best imagery we're going to get is from the handheld cameras that the astronauts are taking pictures of, but that requires a lot of coordination.
We actually have to we just completed a developmental flight test objective to take pictures preliminarily through the windows, so that we can determine which areas of the windows are the best ones to take pictures out of. So that's taken a lot of planning. Plus, just right after, of course, there'll be no coms when they go on the back side of the moon, so that's challenging.
We have to get everything set up ahead of time, because we won't be able to turn the vehicle cameras on and off. So we have to get that all done ahead of time. So we have to make those plans ahead of time. And then there's also the fact that for for this particular mission profile, because of the day we launched, we're going to have a pretty long eclipse right after we come back on this side of the moon.
And that's going to be a power challenge for us. So, you know, we still want to get some good pictures, but they're going to have to be all from the D5. So we had to do. Our group didn't personally train the the analysts, but we worked with the science folks so that we could tell them what to do to tell the astronauts how to take the pictures.
So it's a very complicated thing with lots of moving parts. I'm just excited to see things we haven't seen before. I will say it's harder with people on board because before we didn't have to worry about crew sleeping or, you know, hey, they need to eat. We could just get pictures whenever we needed them and move the vehicle as we needed to.
So it's been challenging that way. And a lot of because we're trying to image new things and we have some systems on board. Artemis two that we didn't have on Artemis one. So we've had to work with those consoles as well in those disciplines in order to make sure that we can get our pictures. For example, we want to get pictures of just today, they wanted to get some photos of the there's a portion on the vehicle.
It's one of the vents that they wanted pictures of, but that requires that we interface with. We have to get the sun angle at the right angle, and that means we need to move the attitude of the vehicle to point it towards the sun and the right. Then we need to move a saw camera. We need to move a saw.
We need the which saw. We need to know what angle to have it at and then we have to. We also have to go with the people that turn the cameras on and off for us, and take the pictures for us, and then we have to get those images down to the ground. So it's a lot of work just to turn a camera on.
It has been really exciting. It's very stressful because you know that everything you do affects the crew in some manner. So that's been, you know, exciting and stressful. We've had some challenges with the hardware itself. You know, every time you fly, there's always something new. Vehicle always does something to surprise you. So we've had some good lessons learned on that.
We have a lot of lessons learned. And we we write those down all the time and try to incorporate them both into our training and then into new operations for, you know, Artemis three and forward, sometimes for the next day, sometimes for the next mission. Artem is for now when we're going to have boots on the moon. I mean, that's going to be really exciting.
I was four years old when we landed in 69. I just aged myself, so I was four years old. So I kind of have a little memory, but not a lot. But I am excited for my children are excited to see that. And I know that my grandson and granddaughter are excited to see that too. So I'm really looking forward to boots on the moon.
You know, it's a dream come true because I never thought I would get to do that. So having people move, sorry, having people on the moon would be really cool into everything.
Hello, my name is Dwayne Chin and we are inside the Mission Control Center, MCC and within the MCC we are inside the Orion Mur, which is the mission evaluation room. Okay, so there are several consoles within the Mur. I support the chess console. The chest console is a unique console because a lot of these other disciplines have. They look at one system where they monitor one system.
So the chess console monitors multiple systems and they're generally not vehicle systems. So we monitor the ox, which are the suits, the spacesuits that the crew uses. We also do flight crew equipment, which we call FC. And that's all some of the lot of the loose equipment within the cabin. And then we also do human health and performance, HMP hardware, which is the medical the exercise and environmental health equipment.
You know, those three systems and some of the loose systems. I mean we basically support those pieces of hardware. So like today there was an activity for the ox suits. So we you know, there's several of us that support the mercantile. What we do is we sit on console. And during that activity, if something happens during the activity, which it could be the suits, it could be flight crew equipment, it could be happy hardware as on console, where we would help troubleshoot anomalies or any issues that come up.
Because in these other systems, you know, the folks that may in the console generally come from that system, right? So the way our console is set up, you know, there are six of us that support the chest console. And we all kind of have different backgrounds. So my background is in HMP, I work in human health and performance, so I am not as familiar with the suits.
I'm not as familiar with the flight crew equipment and their processes. So like today's activity with the Deftones, we have a lot of side seat SME's, subject matter experts that come in for those specific activities to to help us monitor. Right. So like, you know, I know enough I know the mirror processes, I know how to communicate within the team.
And then we bring in these mes that come and sit during the activity so that, you know, I probably know enough to get in trouble, but I don't know enough with specific details about the hardware. So the suits are the suits that the crew uses during launch and they would use during landing. And then in case of a contingency, which we have this scenario of 144 hour return, which is the maximum amount of time it would take for a right to return in terms of contingency, like a deep press.
They would be suited within these suits, and they would live in those suits until they splash them. So the DTO was an activity for them to on orbit in zero gravity, to get into the suits and do some tasking, do some small tasks or some other tasks, and so that the ox team could get some lessons learned or learn some stuff about how the suit performs in zero gravity with with minimal pressure.
Yeah, yeah. So today's test was unique. It's one of those things where it doesn't always go as planned, but you still try and get as much out of it as possible. One of the positives, they were actually able to get into the suits and suit up and pressurize. They did deploy two seats where the pilot and the commander got into, but from there they just encounter some challenges that they kind of adjust.
So they adjusted their objectives a little bit. You know, a detailed plan detailed the detailed flight test objective. They have defined objectives that they would like to meet, but we had to alter those a little today. So they were they were still able to accomplish some things. They just weren't able to accomplish all the activities that they had played before.
Yeah. So so this one was kind of talk about the performance of the suit. Right. They wanted to look at the performance of the suit. So they they were doing some reach tests they wanted to see while seated and pressurized, if they could reach certain areas of the cabin, and then also if they could do certain tasks, like in this 144 hour scenario that I discussed that returned, if they have to live in the suit for those hours, then there's a snack tool, which is a little tool that they use to to to get nutrition and water.
So they wanted to set that up and kind of use that system in a pressurized zero gravity environment. They also have a pill tool where in case if they're in this scenario of the returning and they're injured, then they then they may need medication. So we have this peel tool that they would use to deploy medicine within the suit and not break the seal.
So those are a couple of the specific things that they wanted to go through today. Yeah. So so today was my first day of supporting the mission right. We launched Wednesday, but today was my first day to be able to work console. And it was pretty exciting because for the past two years I've been committed to this mission.
I've been committed to Orion working full time. It this is really the you know, we work a lot of Sims in preparation for this, but this was actually live, right? This is the the opportunity we get to support the mission while they're in orbit. And that's pretty exciting. I think that's pretty exciting in general. Yeah. So I'm on console the next three days.
And I think within those three days we're going to be doing the lunar flyby. So that is going to be super exciting to be able to see the photos, be able to hear the crew's excitement and see their reactions. I think that's going to be fun. In general. I have a long history with the hardware and integration into the Orion capsule, so now is the time we actually get to see it, right?
We get to use some of these things that have taken a long time to develop, and we've actually get to see them perform. We get to learn on how they worked and maybe fix things or change things for future missions. So that's, you know, it's kind of see how things transform from Artemis two to the future missions will be pretty exciting.
But just to see this is like, you know, I know it's not the finish line for our Artemis, but for a lot of us who did the development and did the integration and the requirements development over the years, it's pretty exciting to actually see it being used. Yeah, I mean, it's really special. I, you know, I worked other I worked other vehicles like ES and shuttle.
And I think the footprint that we have now with social media and how that just spreads globally and exponentially, it's really impactful to a lot of things that we do that happen outside of these walls. So that's pretty impactful. Also, a lot of my family, you know, they get pretty excited. They I send them pictures and maybe they'll see this video and they get their like always interested in what we're doing and what I'm doing.
So.
So my name is Emily Collin. I'm a member of the Control Council here in the Orion Mission Evaluation Room, or Murr. And today we're preparing for the lunar flyby. Our council is responsible for controlling the attitude or orientation of the Orion spacecraft. We're also responsible for the positioning of the solar array wings or saws. So every day there are special activities that require some certain attitude or configuration of the solar arrays to meet their objectives.
For example, we might need to point a certain antenna back at Earth, or point a camera that's fixed to the exterior of the spacecraft at the moon. So the control console is watching the attitude maneuvers that are required to reach that target attitude happen. We're making sure we get to the target attitude, and we're making sure that we maintain stability when we're there.
The solar arrays are primarily for power generation. We have four of them on our on Orion. However, we don't need to use all four simultaneously for power generation under normal conditions. So that means we have the freedom, in most cases to reposition at least one of the solar arrays to point the camera that's at the tip of it, at any nearby celestial body or other target that might be interesting to look at, usually the Earth or the moon, and often you can see the tail end of the spacecraft in some of these images.
Sometimes we reposition the saws to move them forward so you can see the crew module into the windows. We took a selfie the other day of the crew looking out the windows. That was really fun. So what we're doing on console for the lunar flyby is going to be different from what we've done every flight day prior to this, in advance of the flyby, in advance of today's lunar flyby, the timeline of how the vehicle's orientation will be changing relative to the moon has already been established.
For much of it, the spacecraft will be oriented such that the CM windows or Orion's windows are pointed at the moon, so the crew will be in the windows with their cameras, making their observations, taking lots of pictures. Similarly, some of the saws will also be positioned to get flyby imagery. Aside from making sure that the attitude is correct, we're pointing the right things like the windows, for example, at the moon, we're making sure the rotational rates on the vehicle are minimal.
We don't want to be spinning the crew up or spinning out of control, so we'll be making sure everything is stable and staying in place. So the biggest change from Artemis one to Artemis two has been the introduction of the crew. Now that we have life support systems onboard to support the crew, we're seeing more motion on the vehicle in certain instances.
For example, whenever there's a wastewater activity where that's being expelled from the vehicle, whenever the crew is exercising, we can see the motion that they are putting on the vehicle in the control system, and we're able to see the control system respond to that. Well, every day has been exciting so far. They've all presented new and different challenges on our console.
I think the most exciting moment will be later today for the lunar flyby. This is my personal favorite part of the mission, and I think it'll be really exciting for everyone. I'm so happy and so proud to be here in the mirror for Artemis two. We've worked so hard and it's amazing to see our hard work paid off.
We're finally executing the mission. It's going well. I love being here, working with a team of world class engineers to solve problems, and eventually we'll bring the crew home safely after Artemis two. It's right on to Artemis three. I love the Orion spacecraft and the Artemis missions, so I intend to keep working here. Maybe in the mirror, maybe elsewhere for Artemis three.
But I will still be involved.
Hello, I'm Regan Patel. I'm the system manager for the terminal control system of the Orion spacecraft. And I support the TCS console in the Orion fans for the passive thermal control system of the Orion spacecraft. So we manage a heat via passive means. So we don't have any active fluid flow in our heat system. So we use, like Emily and heaters to manage the thermal balance of the various hardware on the state on the Orion.
So the system based thermal control system is comprised of like Emily, which is a multi-layer insulation, which are the blankets that go around different hardware to help keep them warm during the when they are flying in the space, as well as we have heaters to keep things warm and to the blankets, and we also have temperature sensors across the different systems to understand how the thermal performance is changing as we fly the mission.
So the test is the passive terminal control system console, and we monitor the telemetry from all the temperature and heater sensors across the spacecraft, across various systems like communication and tracking, landing and recovery mechanisms, life support systems, to name a few throughout all phases of the mission from when we are on the ground and getting ready to launch, when we are purging and preconditioning the spacecraft through launch and ascent while we are in the space, and as we are reentering and landing through splashdown and recovery, when we when we monitor this telemetry, we are looking to keep all the hardware within its thermal limits.
And in order to do that, we need to maintain a general awareness of how each of the systems are being configured, used and managed throughout the mission. We also need to keep a very close look on the how the spacecraft is flying relative to the sun, the moon, and the Earth, because how it's flying and how it's oriented results in how the radiative heat load impact is, is being put onto the spacecraft.
So depending on the orientation, then we have to manage different hardware. We have to take a closer look at it. And we have we have to come up with certain time constraints on how long we can be in that orientation. And we work with different teams in case of an anomaly or thermal related anomaly, or an unexpected temperature signature to come up with solutions.
We work with the entire and several different consoles throughout the entire mission. So just yesterday we had our lunar flyby, which was very exciting. We are very happy to see humanity's return to the moon. And while we were approaching the moon, we had oriented the spacecraft such that some of the windows were pointed directly towards the sun, and one of those windows happened to have a shroud or a cover around it.
And because of that, it created a local thermal hotspot. That that that created an environment where the temperatures of that window pane started rising faster than what we had expected. And when that happened, me and my console played a key role in identifying that temperature trend and then communicating that trend, how it changes in real time through the entire more and more management and different teams.
Even on the flight control side, we worked in parallel very diligently to come up with a solution on how to mitigate these warm temperatures. So we were able to find an orbit available hose that can redirect cold air onto the windows underneath the shroud that was covering it. And by doing so, we were able to maintain these windows within their thermal and structural limits throughout the entire lunar pass.
Yeah. So on a bigger scale, since the mission started, we have been monitoring a list of hardware that we had identified with our pre mission analysis that showed us that every time we do a change in the orientation of how Orion flies, we have some pieces of hardware identified as that they might get hotter than expected. So we are monitoring the telemetry of those pieces of hardware.
Anytime we had a change in attitude throughout the mission, including the lunar pass, and we were happy to see that, but all the telemetry that we saw, it remained within the bounds of our analysis. And not only it remained within the bounds of analysis, it also remained within its limits, which is really nice. So we have now entered the return trajectory.
So we are really excited to see the crew return home safely along with the spacecraft through the reentry and the splashdown phase. What's particularly exciting for the thermal console is we are now in a phase where we have the opportunity to do an on orbit test. This test would be to characterize the thermal performance of the spacecraft under stable conditions.
So when we do this test, the data that we will get from this test will help us improve our thermal analytical math models, which will then result in greater operational flexibility for the mission planners and the flight control team for planning and executing future missions while maintaining crew safety as well as spacecraft safety. So we look forward to collecting that data.
There have been several moments, you know, there's been very exciting to see leading up to the launch, through the launch, as we launch and as we flew around the moon. One exciting moment particularly was when we were deciding to go do the transfer injection burn. Those be our final decision that we'll be on the way to the moon.
And that was very exciting to to be here and to see the real time coordination between all the different teams. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's incredible to be here. I wanted to be in the human spaceflight ever since I was a little kid. So, you know, to be here and to experience this mission unfold in real time and to be part of this team, it's really like a dream come true.
And I'm just living in my dream. Right? Yeah. So the Orion is the Orion mission evaluation room. This is our engineering room. We kind of. This is where all the different engineering teams come to monitor the data and kind of help the flight control team throughout the mission and monitoring the data, as well as making any technical recommendations for any anomalies that might show up during the mission.
The entire mission. My team has been doing a great job and staying on top of it. As I mentioned before, we have a lot of systems to monitor, so it takes a lot of people to monitor the systems, and I'm very happy with how the how the team has performed so far, and to be part of that team and leading that team through this mission.
I'm looking for. And as you all know, the bottom part of the spacecraft, the service module is called the European Service Module because it's done is done in Europe, and I work for the European Space Agency. And my day to day job is being the leader of the mission integration and flight operations. I'm here as the leader of the flight operations team for the European part of the team.
Well, so the service module, we also call it the powerhouse of the Orion vehicle. And this somehow power in many senses. But the most common sense, the electrical power, because of course, we have the four solar array wings that feed power into the service module. And from the service module we distribute it to the service modules users, but especially to the crew module for the all the functions that require power and also power, in the sense that we do have the engines, the engines that are used for every single maneuver until the separation before reentry are done with the European Service module engines.
Inside the service module, we basically have the radiators around and lots of tanks inside and in between the tanks. We try to feed all the equipment and the electronics and these tanks we have water tanks and then we have oxygen tanks and the nitrogen. So to be honest, before coming here I was very worried, not because I don't have faith in the performance of the SM of Orion, but you know, during Artemis Swan being an engineer, you just try to make things work and try to proceed with the mission.
And here there is another big factor to take into account, which is the fact that somehow the lives of four people is literally in our hands. And I felt like a big responsibility right now that we are here in operation, we are extremely busy, so there is little time to think. And so we are really, really focusing in the day to day and, and then especially the first couple of days where I think we're very hard, lots of work to do, lots of things happening, lots of things to understand of the spacecraft right now that things that have been Kalmar still hectic, but a bit calmer.
Now there is time to realize really the magnitude of what we've done. So yeah, it's a great moment. So liftoff was a wow. Also because, as everybody knows, we've been trying to launch this mission since January and to see now an absolutely flawless countdown and launch was was really amazing, but vice versa. For those of you who followed the mission, it was a very hectic phase because, you know, we went up then immediately check out of something, a couple of burns and then we go into manual piloting.
So there was also a little time to realize what we achieved instead. Yesterday during the flyby, I was also of console, but of course I was still here. And then you really can appreciate and realize the magnitude of what we've done. That was really a wow moment. It's also seeing the crew being a bit moved of what, you know, what they achieved and and thinking that we were all part of of this.
It's it's incredible. It's to be honest, it's incredible. I'm excited. I'm looking forward to be honest to a successful splashdown and completion of the mission, because it would mean that we've done our job as it should have. And well, as the administrator announced a couple of weeks ago or three weeks ago, we have an extremely exciting and challenging few years ahead of us.
This is just the first step. So we are actually just now starting to plan all the future mission and all the work that we need to do to incorporate the lessons learned from this mission to the future. And that's something that I'm really looking forward to and it's extremely exciting. Normally when we fly, the sun is in the back.
So we did study and we decided the ESM module to have the sun in the back. Now, you might think that it doesn't really matter where the sun is, because on Earth there is the atmosphere, the sun is shielded, there is air, but on space it makes a huge difference. When you're at the sun, you get extremely hot.
But the other side of the spacecraft is not at the sun. It's extremely cold. So normally we can fly for a prolonged amount of time only with the sun in the back. And we learned that all of our analysis were extremely pessimistic instead, and the vehicle behaves much better also when the sun is much more robust to having the sun also in other position.
And this is something I think very interesting also for the future mission and, and shows that we really built all together and extremely robust. We have a short time and we are so busy in analyzing still the data and try to, you know, it's a vehicle that produces an immense amount of data, and then it takes effort to analyze and understand what it really means.
So my name is Jennifer Gratz. I work on the SM propulsion console in the Orion Mission evaluation room. So we are a room of engineers that have been working on designing this vehicle, testing this vehicle, preparing this vehicle for flight. And now we are here monitoring the data during the mission. My console in particular is the propulsion console for the service module, the vehicles in two parts.
You've got the crew module where the people go and the service module where all the main engines are. So I work on the console that manages all of those engines. So really a day on the console depends on what we're doing that day. We might have a really big burn that day. The biggest burn that we did was what's called our trans lunar injection burn.
And that was when we burned the biggest engine on the vehicle, and it sent us on our way to the moon. So that day we were doing a lot of different things, from monitoring temperatures on the engines and pressures of the fuel to monitoring the thrust that we were getting out of the engine and making sure that it was behaving as expected.
On a quieter day, we are doing more monitoring the individual sensors that we have on the propulsion system. I think when people think of propulsion system, they just think big engine in the back and that's all there is, but there's actually a lot more to it than that. There's a lot of tubing and there's a lot of tanks and a lot of equipment, and we need to make sure that we know exactly what's happening with every piece of that system at every moment.
So we have sensors all over telling us pressures and temperatures, and we have to watch all of those and see, is this doing what I expected? And if it's not, what can I learn from this? Yeah. So one of the things that we get to learn about when we actually fly the mission is how our vehicle behaves in zero gravity.
We do all kinds of testing on Earth, which is in A1G gravity environment. But things are a little bit different when you take gravity out of the picture. So we have been learning a lot about the speed at which our system responds. If we're trying to do a burn, is it faster, is it slower? And another thing that we get to learn a lot about that really excites our console during the mission.
This is going to sound strange, but temperatures, because when you're here on Earth, the temperature environment is very different than in space. Space is so cold that it would make someone who lives on the North Pole feel like they were in the middle of summer. And so we learn so much about our systems temperatures when we fly a mission, because we can't really replicate that environment very easily here on Earth.
The crew being on board, it does really affect the way that we operate the console in a few different ways. First of all, having people on board is a double edged sword. On one hand, you have people there that can actually push buttons and do things, so sometimes they can respond faster than we can on the ground. Or if we're in a situation where for some reason we temporarily don't have communication with the vehicle, they can still do things if they need to, which is great for us and for them.
But on the other hand, having crew on board also makes every decision that we make and everything that we do that much more important because we are not just protecting this experimental vehicle that we want to learn from and bring home. We are protecting for human lives, and that changes the playing field entirely. This is my first mission working in Mission control.
And so honestly, even just walking across the parking lot and walking into Mission Control at the early hour of 3 a.m., looking up there and seeing that sign that says Mission Control Center and walking in, it sort of feels like it's a dream come true. It almost feels like it isn't real. And every day I walk in here and people are asking me questions and actually wanting to know what I think, when two years ago, I wasn't even working on that system that has been that has been so special for me to have people that I respect and trust and know are very good at their job.
Asking me, how does the propulsion system work? What are we going to do in this situation? There's really no comparison to that. It makes you step back and realize that what you're doing is really a part of history, and what you're doing is really going to change the way that we look at space travel forever. And that is so special.
But also at the same time, for me personally, I see my job partially as working to advance space exploration and make our mark on history. But also I see my job partially as simply being responsible for protecting these four human lives that we sent out into space. If we don't do the trans lunar injection burn, we're not going to the moon.
But if we don't do some of our other burns to make sure that we come back appropriately, our astronauts aren't coming home. And so to me, being on this team means changing history and protecting some really special people. I think I'm excited for two things. I'm excited for splashdown. When the mission is complete. We have all of our data, we have our crew safely home, and we can just celebrate together this amazing accomplishment that we've completed.
And I'm excited for the next lunar landing. We haven't been back to the moon since the end of the Apollo program, which was way before I was born, and I'm very excited to be a part of making history. And also seeing that this time we're going back to the moon and we're doing it differently, and we're doing it to stay.
Honestly, I think probably the biggest thing that I didn't really realize before I started doing this kind of work is the mission that we're flying is ten days, but for us, this mission has been more than ten years in the making. And that's the part that a lot of people don't see is all of the years leading up to this mission, all of the design work, all of the testing work, all of the planning for how we're going to do the flight operations, what things we're going to do when we're on orbit, what data we're going to collect so that afterwards we can go look at that data.
Once we splash down from this mission, our job is not anywhere close to over. Now, we've flown this experimental test, and we have to go and look at all of the data and learn from it so that we can do spaceflight better in the future. And I think that that's something that gets missed a lot, because it's the flight in space that the news pays attention to.
And then when the flights over, people stop watching. But our job doesn't end. I guess the best way to describe how today, and in a way, every moment on console feels is I get here at three in the morning and I drink caffeine because it's three in the morning and I feel almost this nervous energy all day long.
And on one hand, the way that I put it to my teammate the other day, well, actually it was this morning was right now I'm going to do what I can to rise to the challenge in front of me, and I'll be stressed about it later. But on the other hand, there's this there's this tension every moment that you're in here of thinking, okay, well, I need to review this plan very, very thoroughly.
I need to make this decision very carefully. Because if we make a mistake. There are four lives on the line. And that is not something that we're willing to sacrifice. And that's not something that we could ever live with.