DodoFinance Breaking News Made For You!
ONS News••Amended
At a distance of 400,171 kilometers from Earth, the Orion lunar capsule set a new record: never has a spacecraft designed for manned flight reached so far into space. NASA announced tonight that the milestone was reached shortly after Orion launched into wide lunar orbit.
The old record was held by the Apollo 13 mission, the lunar trip in 1970 that narrowly ended in disaster due to a fault on board. Because the crew and flight controllers had been busy saving astronauts’ lives at the time, it wasn’t discovered until years later that they had broken the record.
Orion will tighten this old record even further: until next Monday, the spacecraft will fly even further from us, at a final distance of 432,194 kilometers. This is always done without a crew: this flight is an unmanned test trip.
Orion has been flying in space for ten days now. The unmanned flight, which is part of the Artemis mission, has already produced some beautiful images. During the first week, Orion has already made its first flyby of the Moon, at an altitude of about 130 kilometers.
And it looked like this, swipe right to zoom in more and more:
-
Nasa
Photo of the moon, taken by Orion, unmanned flight in space -
Nasa
Photo of the moon, taken by Orion, unmanned flight in space -
Nasa
Photo of the moon, taken by Orion, unmanned flight in space -
Nasa
Photo of the moon, taken by Orion, unmanned flight in space
The Orion is used by NASA for the Artemis program, which is supposed to return people to the moon after fifty years. This unmanned flight is intended to gain experience for crewed travel over two years.
The cameras also accurately imaged the lunar surface:
-
Nasa
-
Nasa
Photos were also taken at a greater distance. This is a more familiar image:
-
Nasa
Photo of the moon taken by Orion -
Nasa
On the other side, the earth is clearly visible
This is the first time since 1972 that a lunar rocket has been launched from Florida. An extra large platform had to be built for the launch of the Artemis, as the rocket was as tall as the Dom Tower in Utrecht. The Orion capsule is also several times smaller, about the size of two campers.
This is what the launch of the Artemis 1 lunar rocket looked like:
This is what the launch of the Artemis 1 moon rocket looked like
If all goes well, the spacecraft will return to Earth around December 11.
