by A mesmerizing new video shows Earth setting behind our moon as a spacecraft flies nearby.
Artemis 1, the first flight of NASA’s Artemis program, launched early Wednesday morning (Nov. 16). All post-launch milestones atop the massive Space Launch System rocket have been ticked off so far, including a critical engine burnout of the unmanned Orion spacecraft on the moon on Monday (Nov. 21).
NASA carried the burning engine live and also live-streamed 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 planet Earth,” NASA spokeswoman Sandra Jones said during live coverage of the Orion lunar flight Monday (Nov. 21) on NASA Television.
In photos: Beautiful view of NASA’s Artemis 1 moon rocket debut
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 recalled the famous Apollo 8 Christmas Eve broadcast on December 24, 1968, when three astronauts sent 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 “Earthrise” above the lunar surface that remains iconic to this day.
Jones also referred to the “light blue dot” made by NASA’s Voyager 1 probe in 1990 from above the plane of the solar system and beyond Neptune’s orbit. The nickname came from scientist and science popularizer Carl Sagan.
In recent years, Earth observation satellites such as Suomi NPP and GOES-16 have taken “blue marble” images from high above our planet. Periodic flybys by spacecraft such as BepiColombo in 2020 have also shown the entire disk of our Earth.
In photos: The top 10 views of the Earth from space
After Orion’s flyby on Monday, NASA flight director Zeb Scoville said the view of Earth beyond 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).
