Astronauts on Orion have been testing out controls on the spacecraft to see how it handles.
They have been taking it in turns to pilot the spacecraft and check its performance.
Although it’s designed to fly autonomously, the test aims to ensure it can be manually manoeuvred if needed.
The image, centre bottom, shows one of two controllers – one is rotational and the other translational – used to steer the spacecraft.
How to fly a spacecraft
The crew have been performing several different attitude manoeuvres to compare six degrees of freedom, which refers to the six ways that the spacecraft moves.
There are three translational degrees of freedom: forward and backwards, up and down, and left and right, and three rotational degrees of freedom: roll, pitch and yaw.
During the demonstration, the crew repeatedly reported experiencing “cross-coupling”.
That’s when the astronaut inputs a course change in one direction, but it also creates unintended motion or rotation in another.
