NASA’s Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft will reach lunar orbit on Friday afternoon (November 25), and you can watch the moment live.
Orion since then it has been circling toward Earth’s nearest neighbor launch last wednesday (November 16) at NASA Artemis 1 mission – and the unmanned capsule is about to reach its destination.
At 4:52 p.m. EST (2152 GMT) on Friday, Orion will fire the engine that will put the spacecraft into a deep retrograde orbit (DRO) around the Moon. You can watch all the action live here on Space.com starting at 4:30 PM EST (2130 GMT), courtesy of NASA.
Related: NASA’s Artemis 1 lunar mission: Live updates
More: 10 wild facts about the Artemis 1 mission
DRO will take Orion to about 40,000 miles (64,000 kilometers) beyond the Moon at its furthest point. On its way, the capsule will set a new record for going further than any previous human-manned spacecraft from Earth.
The current mark of 248,655 miles (400,171 km) is held by NASA. Apollo 13 the mission was not meant to travel that far. Apollo 13 orbited the Moon instead of landing in the hull after an oxygen tank in the spacecraft’s service module failed in deep space.
Orion will spend a little less than a week at DRO. The capsule will leave lunar orbit in December with engine burnout. 1, then start heading home to Earth. Orion will arrive here in December. 11 with a splash in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California if all goes according to plan.
The approximately 26-day Artemis 1 mission is designed to inspect Orion and NASA’s giant spacecraft. Space launch system A rocket sent the capsule into the sky last week, ahead of planned crewed missions to the Moon.
The first of these astronaut flights, Artemis 2It will send Orion around the Moon in 2024. Artemis 3 it will then put down its boots near the moon’s south pole in 2025 or 2026. Additional landing missions will follow as NASA builds a manned research station in the South Pole region. Artemis program🇧🇷
Mike Wall is the author of “There (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Carl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter. @michaeldwall (opens in new tab)🇧🇷 Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook (opens in new tab)🇧🇷
