Earth rises above the moon in shadow like a blue beacon in newly released video from NASA’s Artemis 1 mission.
The uncrewed Orion spacecraft captured the images on Monday (November 21), the same day it suffered a crucial engine burn during a lunar flyby. Five days earlier, Orion launched into space on Artemis 1, the first flight of NASA’s Artemis program.
The two-minute video shows Earth slowly appearing behind the Moon as Orion flies overhead. The moon is completely invisible in shadow, making our planet appear to emerge from a black void.
The video was taken at 8:05 a.m. EST (1305 GMT) Monday, about six minutes after Orion regained contact with NASA’s deep space antenna network following its lunar maneuver, they said agency officials in a description with the video on YouTube (opens on YouTube). new tab).
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The video was broadcast to Earth outside of an epic live broadcast that took place around that time, which focused on seeing our planet as a “pale blue dot” in the depths of the ‘space in the minutes after Orion regained communication with Earth.
“You’re seeing Earth, you’re seeing home. You’re seeing yourself in that picture right there, because Orion is 232,000 miles across. [373,000 kilometers] away from planet Earth,” NASA spokeswoman Sandra Jones said during NASA Television’s live coverage of Orion’s lunar flyby.
Live viewers on Monday also saw Earth move behind the moon in the moments before Orion lost communication, as expected, to perform its engine maneuver on the lunar far side, which radio waves from the our planet can not reach.
The Artemis 1 mission is testing NASA’s massive Orion Space Launch System rocket’s readiness for future missions in the Artemis program, which will be followed by the Artemis 2 manned mission around the Moon as soon as the 2024.
Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of Why Am I Taller (over in a new tab)? (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book on space medicine. Follow her on Twitter @howellspace (opens in a new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in a new tab) or Facebook (opens in a new tab).