Service module separates from Orion capsulepublished at 00:36 BST 11 April
Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent
Image source, NASAThe service module shown separating from the Orion capsule
The service module has separated from the Orion capsule. This is the moment the crew are, in one practical sense, truly on their own.
For the past 10 days, the cylindrical service module — built by the European Space Agency — has been the workhorse of the mission.
Its engines performed the burns that sent Orion looping around the Moon. Its solar arrays generated the power that kept the crew alive. Its propulsion system nudged the vehicle onto a homeward trajectory across 230,000 miles of empty space.
Now it has been jettisoned and will burn up in the atmosphere, its job complete. It will never be recovered.
What remains is the crew module: the blunt-nosed cone in which Wiseman, Glover, Koch and Hansen have eaten, slept, and marvelled for the past week and a half. It is roughly the size of a large car. It must now survive a plunge through the atmosphere at 24,661mph (39,688km/h).
The final trajectory correction burn is underway, locking the capsule into its precise angle of approach for re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. Nasa’s engineers have less than a degree of margin. Too shallow, and Orion skips off the atmosphere and cannot return. Too steep, and the heating is unsurvivable.
The riskiest part is about to begin.
