The incredible images continue to come from NASA’s Artemis 1 moon mission.
Artemis 1’s uncrewed Orion capsule has been beaming back great photos of Earth and its natural satellite since it lifted off on a Space Launch System rocket on Nov. 16.
NASA shared even more of this eye candy on Wednesday (Dec. 7), in a Twitter post celebrating another famous lunar mission.
“50 years ago, Apollo 17 astronauts captured an iconic view of the ‘Blue Marble’ Earth while gazing at the Moon. Today with #Artemis, this time-lapse image shows the Earth-Moon transit as @NASA_Orion captured our home.planet & moon on 13th flyby,” NASA’s Johnson Space Center tweeted (opens in new tab).
In photos: Artemis 1 launch: Incredible views of NASA’s moon rocket debut
NASA’s uncrewed Orion capsule captured this photograph of the moon crossing in front of Earth on November 28, 2022, on day 13 of the Artemis 1 mission. (Image credit: NASA)
The 13th flight day was November 28, the day Orion ventured the furthest from Earth it will reach during the Artemis 1 mission. This distance (268,563 miles (432,210 kilometers)) is the new record for a spacecraft designed to transport humans.
The previous distance mark was held by NASA’s near-disastrous Apollo 13 mission, which had to orbit the Moon instead of landing in April 1970 after suffering a serious error shortly after launch. take off
Orion was still orbiting the moon on November 28; it arrived in a distant lunar retrograde orbit on 25 November and departed this path on 1 December.
On December 5, the capsule conducted a 3.5-minute engine burn during a close flyby of the Moon, a maneuver that put the capsule on course for Earth. If all goes according to plan, Orion will return to its home planet with a splash from the Pacific Ocean on December 11, ending the Artemis 1 mission.
December 11 was also an important date for Apollo 17. On that day in 1972, astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt landed on the Moon in their lunar module, called Challenger. The duo explored the lunar surface for 75 hours before reuniting with crewmate Ronald Evans in the Lunar Orbiting Command Module. The trio returned to Earth on December 19, 1972.
No astronauts have returned to the Moon since then, but NASA is working to change that with its Artemis program. The agency aims to launch astronauts around the Moon on Artemis 2 in 2024 and put the boots down near the lunar south pole a year or two later on the Artemis 3 mission.
Mike Wall is the author of “Over there (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in a new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in a new tab) or Facebook (opens in a new tab).