Overview
- NASA, which on Thursday announced its full coverage plan, set a no-earlier-than April 1 launch with a two-hour window opening at 6:24 p.m. EDT and backup dates through April 6.
- The roughly 10-day mission will carry NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, plus Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, on a loop around the Moon before a planned Pacific splashdown.
- Live coverage will run around the clock on NASA+ and YouTube, including real-time views from Orion when bandwidth allows and a dedicated Spanish-language stream for launch.
- Key mission goals include the first in-flight tests of Orion’s life-support systems with astronauts aboard to validate operations for future lunar surface missions.
- Ground teams from Integrasys and Spain’s Universidade de Vigo, with University of Seville support, will track Orion by capturing its S-band radio signal and reading Doppler shifts to calculate its position throughout the flight.