The US space agency said on its website that the capsule's lunar flyby, on the return leg of its maiden voyage, came a week after Orion reached its farthest point in space, some 270,000 miles from Earth, on its 25- In between day missions.
The unmanned Orion capsule of NASA's Artemis I mission lifted off on Monday to within 80 miles (130 km) of the lunar surface, the first spacecraft built to carry humans since Apollo 17 flew over half a century ago. Got closest to the moon.
The US space agency said on its website that the capsule's lunar flyby, on the return leg of its maiden voyage, came a week after Orion reached its farthest point in space, some 270,000 miles from Earth, on its 25- In between day missions.
Orion passed about 79 miles above the lunar surface on Monday as the spacecraft fired its thrusters for a "powered flyby burn," designed to change the vehicle's velocity and propel it up for its flight back to Earth. was set.
We have received signal with @NASA_Orion after an expected loss of signal when the spacecraft flew directly behind the Moon.
You can see the earth in the distance. That is us.
— NASA (@NASA) December 5, 2022
NASA said the 3-1/2-minute burn will mark the last major spacecraft maneuver for Orion before it is due to parachute into the ocean and splash down on Dec. 11.
The last time a spacecraft designed for human travel came this close to the Moon was since Orion was the final mission of the Apollo program, Apollo 17, which carried Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt to the lunar surface 50 years ago this month. He was the last of 12 NASA astronauts to walk on the Moon during a total of six Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972.
Although Orion carried no astronauts—only a simulated crew of three mannequins—it flew farther than any previous "crew-class" spacecraft on the 13th day of its mission. It reached a distance of 268,563 miles from Earth, about 20,000 miles from the record distance set in 1970 by the crew of Apollo 13, which aborted its lunar landing and returned to Earth after an almost catastrophic mechanical failure.
Last month's much-anticipated and highly anticipated launch of Orion kicked off Artemis, the Apollo successor program that aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface this decade and establish a permanent base for future human exploration of Mars.
If the mission is successful, a crewed Artemis II could fly around the Moon and back as early as 2024, followed by the first lunar landing of astronauts with Artemis III within a few years. Sending astronauts to Mars is expected to take at least a decade and a half.
"We couldn't be more pleased with how the spacecraft is performing really beyond all of our expectations," Debbie Korth, deputy manager of NASA's Orion program, told reporters at a news briefing on Monday.
Orion was carried into space atop NASA's massive, next-generation Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which launched Nov. 16 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The mission marked the first flight of the combined SLS rocket and Orion capsule, built by The Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp., respectively, under contract with NASA.
The main purpose of Orion's inaugural flight is to test the durability of its heat shield as it re-enters Earth's atmosphere at 24,500 miles per hour, much faster than the spacecraft returning from the International Space Station .
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