Artemis Returning to Earth
Orion captured imagery of the Earth and Moon together from its distant lunar orbit, including this image on Nov. 28, 2022, taken from camera on one of the spacecraft’s solar array wings.
Image Credit: NASA
December 6, 2022 – The Artemis mission has scored some major achievements during the trip around the moon and the spacecraft is scheduled to splash down in the Pacific Ocean on Dec. 11, completing its 1.4 million mile, 26-day mission.
On board the massive rocket is the Orion spacecraft, which is being tested for future crewed missions. According to mission managers “everything that vehicle was asked to do, it’s done. And it’s done phenomenally.”
During the flight, Artemis broke the human-rated spacecraft distance record that was set back in 1970 by Apollo 13. Although surpassing the distance wasn’t part of the mission, the Artemis 1 capsule reached a maximum distance from Earth of 268,553 miles (432,194 km) on November 28.
During the mission the craft flew by the moon as close as 80 miles from the surface. NASA officials said the cameras on board attempted to take images of some Apollo landing sights. No word so far on how the images turned out or what they showed.
Congratulations to the Artemis team for an excellent trip to the moon and on its way back again. Keep watching for details on the Dec 11 splash down.
Source: Inverse