On flight day 11, NASA’S Orion spacecraft captured imagery looking back at the Earth from a camera mounted on one of its solar arrays. The spacecraft is currently in a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon. Credit: NASA
On day 11 of the Artemis I mission, Orion continues its journey beyond the Moon after entering a distant retrograde orbit on Friday, November 25, at 3:52 p.m. CST. Orion will remain in this orbit for six days before exiting lunar orbit to put the spacecraft on a trajectory back to Earth for a Sunday, December 11, splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
At 7:42 a.m. on Saturday, November 26, Orion surpassed the distance record for a mission with a spacecraft designed to carry humans to deep space and back to Earth. The record was set during the Apollo 13 mission at 248,655 miles (400,171 km) from our home planet. At its maximum distance from the Moon, Orion will be more than 270,000 miles (435,000 km) from Earth Monday, November 28.
Engineers also completed the first orbital maintenance burn by firing auxiliary thrusters on Orion’s service module at 3:52 p.m. for less than a second to propel the spacecraft at .47 feet per second. The planned orbital maintenance burns will fine-tune Orion’s trajectory as it continues its orbit around the Moon.
This high-resolution image captures the inside of the Orion crew module on flight day one of the Artemis I mission. At left is Commander Moonikin Campos, a purposeful passenger equipped with sensors to collect data that will help scientists and engineers understand the deep-space environment for future Artemis missions. At the center is the Callisto payload, a technology demonstration of voice-activated audio and video technology from Lockheed Martin in collaboration with Amazon and Cisco. Callisto could assist future astronauts on deep-space missions. Below and to the right of Callisto is the Artemis I zero-gravity indicator, astronaut Snoopy. Credit: NASA
Flying aboard Orion on the Artemis I mission is a suited manikin named after a key player in bringing Apollo 13 safely back to Earth. Arturo Campos was an electrical engineer who developed a plan to provide the command module with enough electrical power to navigate home safely after an oxygen tank aboard the service module of the Apollo spacecraft ruptured. Commander Moonikin Campos is outfitted with sensors to provide data on what crew members may experience in flight, continuing Campos’ legacy of enabling human exploration in deep space.
Artemis builds on the experience of Apollo. With Artemis, humans will return to the lunar surface, and this time to stay.
On Saturday, November 26, at 8:42 a.m. EST (13:42