NASA has announced that the Orion spacecraft, which is at the centre of the organisation’s historic Artemis I mission, has reached about 270,000 miles (434,523 kilometers), the farthest distance from Earth.
It is the longest distance a spacecraft designed to carry humans has ever traveled and more than 40,000 miles (64,374 kilometers) beyond the far side of the moon.
As Jackie Wattles notes: “The previous record for the farthest a human-rated spacecraft has traveled, which stretched out to 248,655 miles (400,171 kilometers) from earth, was set during the Apollo 13 mission in 1970.”
“The goal of the Artemis I mission, which launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on November 16, is to test the Orion capsule to its limits, ensuring the vehicle is ready to safely host humans,” Wattles writes.
According to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, “Artemis I has had extraordinary success and has completed a series of history-making events.”
He said: “Since the launch, we have been receiving critical data back and there’s a lot more to come. … The biggest test after the launch is the reentry because we want to know that that heat shield works at about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius), almost half as hot as the sun, coming in at 32 times the speed of sound (nearly 40,000 kilometers per hour).”
Orion Program Manager Howard Hu said the spacecraft’s performance has been “outstanding,” and that the spacecraft “is outperforming expectations in some respects, such as producing about 20 per cent more power than it really needs.”
NASA expects that the Artemis III mission, currently slated for a 2025 launch will “put boots back on the moon” and will “include the first woman and the first person of color to achieve such a milestone.”
