So you need two hand
controllers to fly it manually.
And you float into one of these two seats,
and then you can look out the window
and you can fly the spacecraft.
It’s really important to know where you are,
especially when you’re trying to go
so far away, out to the Moon,
approximately 400,000 km away,
hit these precise orbital
positions so that you
(A) don’t hit the Moon, but also don’t
go too far out and get lost in space.
And so, navigation is really important.
So two ways to know where we are.
One is Earth can tell us;
they can use all of their systems
that we have here on Earth
to track the capsule,
and then they can send us
updated information on where we are
and how fast we’re going
and in what direction.
The other way is for us to use the stars.
And so we have special systems
on board the capsule here
that can take imagery from
the stars, and they can also
look at the position of the Moon
and based on the date,
where the shadow of the Moon is,
and we can use all that information
to figure out where we are in space
and how fast we’re going.
And so, that’s kind of neat that we use the stars
to help us understand where we are in space.
Now when it comes to
manoeuvring the spacecraft, we actually
can manually pilot the spacecraft.
Obviously it can be done
through automation, because
Artemis I flew without a crew on it.
But on this mission,
whenever you have crew on it,
you want to have backup options where
if for some reason the automation doesn’t work,
we want to still be able to dock with the spacecraft
so that future Artemis crews could come home
when they have to dock with their vehicle
to get back from the Moon, for example.
And so, this is a hand controller,
just like a joystick for flying a flight simulator.
We installed this here in the seat,
and we can use it
to manually control the vehicle.
We have another hand controller
on here for the other axes
because it’s not like an airplane
where you just need a control stick –
you actually need to be able
to translate in space as well.
So you need two hand
controllers to fly it manually.
And you float into one of these two seats,
and then you can look out the window
and you can fly the spacecraft.