Historical Retrospective on Orion GNC Design

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Historical Retrospective on Orion GNC Design

R. Gay

On November 16, 2022, Artemis I successfully launched and began a nearly 26-day journey returning a human-rated spacecraft to the Moon for the first time in fifty years. The mission was a huge success and once again the world's attention was focused on the Moon. This paper will take a step back in time over the seventeen-plus years of design and development of the Orion Guidance Navigation and Control (GNC) system that carried the spacecraft 1.4 million miles around the Moon and landed safely back on earth off the coast of San Diego California. Key design decisions (good and not so good) and "first-ever" capabilities will be chronicled. This paper will explore such things as the most advanced on-board targeting system ever flown on a spacecraft, never-been-done-before autonomous planetary Optical Navigation, and the first-ever truly skip entry guided to the desired target within a few miles.