The Orion spacecraft has brushed past the moon and is now on its return journey. Along the way, he has captured stunning images of our planet.
NASA’s spacecraft is on its way home again. On November 16, it was lifted by the Space Launch System rocket from its launch pad trip to the moon. On December 5, Orion completed its closest approach to the moon and began its return journey.
Orion approached the lunar surface as close as 127 kilometers. That happened on the far side of the celestial body. That’s the side we never see from Earth, because the rotation of the Moon on its axis is equivalent to its orbit around the Earth. When Orion re-emerged, it captured the half-illuminated Earth just above the lunar surface.
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Test mission
If all goes well, Orion will crash into the sea near California on December 11. Its journey through the Earth’s atmosphere is the most exciting part of the mission: Orion will then be exposed to temperatures as high as 2,800 degrees Celsius. So one of the main goals of this test mission is to determine whether Orion’s heat shield can handle those temperatures.
If so, the Artemis II mission in 2024 will be the next step of NASA’s lunar program. Then a manned space capsule will orbit the moon.
A year later, astronauts will actually set foot on the lunar surface again. That’s the first time since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. NASA hopes that mission, called Artemis III, marks the beginning of a long-term presence of humans on the moon.