A view of NASA’s Orion capsule near its farthest point beyond the moon and Earth with both worlds … [+]
NASA’s Artemis I mission is entering the back half of its journey.
After traveling as far from Earth as any human-rated spacecraft in history, the Orion capsule is set to leave its orbit around the moon and begin to return back to Earth for a splashdown landing in the ocean later this month.
But along the way, as it completed a number of trips around our natural satellite ina novel elliptical orbit, Orion captured some newly iconic images of our little home drifting through space.
The above image was taken on Monday, Nov. 28, from the mission’s maximum distance from Earth of 268,563 miles away. The picture comes from a camera mounted on one of Orion’s solar arrays.
Orion has been in a distant retrograde orbit of the moon since Nov. 25 and mission controllers plan to light up the spacecraft’s thrusters at 3:53 p.m. Central Time on Thursday to exit the orbit and begin to long journey home.
“We are continuing to collect flight test data and buy down risk for crewed flight,” said Mike Sarafin, Artemis mission manager, in an update. “We continue to learn how the system is performing, where our margins are, and how to operate and work with the vehicle as an integrated team.”
While Orion has been pointing its cameras back at Earth to take newly iconic photos of us and everyone we know, a few meticulous skywatchers have also managed to take a photo of Orion on its mission.
The composite image centers on Orion surrounding by trails from stars.
Astronomer Gianluca Masi and the Virtual Telescope Project based in Rome managed to grab a picture of Orion using their robotic telescopes.
“Taking such a picture was quite difficult,” Masi wrote in a blog post. “This is a record setting image: to our knowledge, no other images of Artemis I – Orion were taken before via a telescope from the ground.”
At the time the image was taken, it was still farther away than the moon.
Artemis is currently set to splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego on Dec. 11.
