Nasa has released images and a video of the dark side of the moon. During the Artemis 1 mission, the Orion started its descent from the lunar orbit on December 6 and started capturing images of the dark side of the moon. The dark side of the moon never faces the Earth.
“And we do have confirmation of an acquisition of signal on the Deep Space Network in Goldstone at 11.12am central,” a voice narrated on the stunning video Nasa displayed via Twitter.
As Orion continued to coast through the video, the voice went on: “You’re getting a view of the lunar surface from Orion’s perspective.”
There is a sliver of light in the background that looks like a crescent moon.
However, Nasa clarified via the caption of the tweet, “You can see Earth in the distance. That’s us.”
The Artemis I mission is unmanned. It blasted off on November 16 from the Florida Kennedy Space Center. Artemis I is the tester for Artemis II. Artemis I is testing Nasa’s “new rocket and space technology” and Artemis II will take off in 2024 and will have astronauts aboard.
After that, Artemis III aims to place astronauts on the Moon for the first time since the Apollo mission of 1972.
Nasa even plans to use the series of Artemis missions to build the premiere moon base for continuing human occupation of the Moon.
Looking further down the line, the model and technology used in the Artemis series could be the precursor to putting the first humans on Mars, and other distant, desirable space destinations.
I think it’s exciting that we are traveling to space again. The internet has a mix of opinions. Some people are excited, some don’t see the point, and others think it’s all CGI. What do you think?
