Artemis 1’s Orion Sees Earth Set Behind Moon (Video)
A mesmerizing new video shows Earth setting behind our moon as a spacecraft flies nearby.
artemis 1NASA’s first flight Artemis programlaunched early Wednesday morning (November 16). All the post-launch milestones on top of the huge ones Space Launch System missile have been ticked off so far, including one crucial engine combustion of the unmanned Orion spacecraft at the Moon on Monday (November 21).
NASA carried the burning engine live and also livestreamed footage of Orion flying near the moon when a signal from the capsule was available.
“You see Earth; you see home. You see yourself there in that image while Orion is 232,000 miles [373,000 kilometers] away from the planet Soilsaid NASA spokesperson Sandra Jones during live coverage of the Orion lunar flight Monday (Nov. 21) on NASA Television.
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Orion’s high-definition view of Earth on Monday was far from the first time we’ve glimpsed our planet from so far away.
During the broadcast Jones evoked the famous Christmas Eve broadcast of Apollo 8 on Dec. 24, 1968, when three astronauts beamed home live black-and-white images of the Moon, during the first human orbital lunar journey. Apollo 8 crew member Bill Anders also captured a still color image of “Earth riseabove the lunar surface that remains iconic to this day.
Jones also referred to the “light blue dotimage created by NASA’s Voyager 1 probe in 1990 from above the plane of the solar system and beyond the orbit of Neptune. The nickname came from scientist and science popularizer Carl Sagan.
In recent years, Earth observation satellites such as Finnish nuclear power plant and GOES-16 have provided “blue marble” photos from high above our planet. Periodic flybys by spacecraft such as BepiColombo in 2020 our have also shown The full disk of the Earth.
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After Orion’s flyby on Monday, NASA flight director Zeb Scoville said the view of Earth behind the moon “is a game-changer” as NASA prepares to send humans back to lunar realms with the Artemis 2 mission, which is currently underway. will fly no earlier than 2024. .
“When I started working at NASA, we flew a shuttle,” Scoville recalled on NASA Television.
“We were building a space station and flying it. That’s an incredible vehicle, but on the horizon was always how humanity went back to the moon… [We’re] is preparing to bring people back there in a few years. This is a game changer.”
Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of “Why am I taller (opens in new tab)(ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a space medicine book. Follow her on Twitter @howellspace (opens in new tab). follow us on twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook (opens in new tab).
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