NASA’s Artemis I Orion spacecraft’s camera captured some extremely detailed images of the moon and was released on November 23. The spacecraft is being tested for future manned trips to the moon. Some images are from only 80 feet above the moon’s surface.
NASA snapped the black and white images with the Orion capsule’s optical navigation camera, which engineers are testing for future moon flights. “Orion uses the optical navigation camera to capture imagery of the Earth and the Moon at different phases and distances, providing an enhanced body of data to certify its effectiveness under different lighting conditions as a way to help orient the spacecraft on future missions with crew,” NASA wrote online.
.@NASA_Orion continues to travel away from the Moon as it prepares to enter a distant retrograde orbit.
Orion will reach its farthest distance from the Moon on Nov. 25, just before performing the next major burn to enter the orbit. https://t.co/tAZy1OHv2X pic.twitter.com/bf3JGIXaA2
— NASA Artemis (@NASAArtemis) November 23, 2022
NASA suspects that some of the moons craters contain “bounties of water ice, ” a resource needed for future deep space missions. The pictures the Orion is capturing has been helpful for future missions.
The Orion capsule, which will one day carry up to six astronauts, has some major benchmarks just ahead. On Friday evening, NASA will fire the spacecraft’s engines and send it into an orbit (called “distant retrograde orbit”) that will fling it some 50,000 miles beyond the moon. There, it will orbit the moon for over six days. Then Orion will again fire its engines to leave the moon’s gravity and travel back to Earth.
The uncrewed spacecraft is expected to splash down into the Pacific Ocean, off of San Diego, on Dec. 11. If the mission proves successful, astronauts may fly aboard Orion as early as 2024. And though the timeline is ambitious and will likely be pushed back, astronauts may again step foot on the lunar surface as soon as 2025.
Source Mashable
