Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen completed a 41-minute manual piloting demonstration on Day 4, testing Orion in six and three degrees of freedom. The demonstration began at 9:09 p.m. EDT, with Koch and Hansen taking turns at the controls. 1
The test extends the piloting programme that began with the proximity demo after launch , where the crew manoeuvred within 10 metres of the ICPS upper stage. That early test validated close-proximity handling; this one measured how the spacecraft responds to manual inputs at translunar distance, where communications delay, different gravitational conditions, and four days of thermal cycling could affect thruster performance.
Commander Reid Wiseman and Pilot Victor Glover are scheduled for an identical demonstration on Day 8. The split design, two crew members now, two later, produces comparative handling data across different mission phases and thermal conditions. For a programme building toward Artemis III, where a crew will need to dock with a lunar lander, manual piloting data from deep space is not a rehearsal. It is the engineering basis for future mission profiles.
