NASA releases high-resolution images of the moon during the last flyby of the Orion spacecraft (Photo: NASA)
The NASA images were taken by a high-resolution camera mounted on the tip of the spacecraft’s solar panels;
Orion made this Wednesday (7) his last circumnavigation of the Moon on his way to Earth;
The images show the spacecraft circling the moon and taking a picture on the far side of the moon.
capsule Orion made this Wednesday (7) his last orbit around the Moon on the way to the Earth, and NASA released some of the best photos of the spacecraft. Pictures taken by a high-resolution camera mounted on the tip of Orion’s solar panels show the spacecraft orbiting the Moon and taking a picture of the moon’s far side.
Photos taken by Orion during its first close lunar transit were quite grainy and blurry, likely because they were taken with Orion’s optical navigation camera rather than a solar panel-mounted GoPro. Other GoPro photos were slightly overexposed, but NASA seems to have set their latest series of photos right.
Space photographs were obviously not the primary focus of the Artemis I mission, but they are important for public relations, as NASA has found in previous missions. It was a little surprising that NASA didn’t show some high-resolution close-ups of the Moon’s surface when it first flew by.
Orion’s performance so far has been “excellent,” program manager Howard Hu told reporters last week. The spacecraft was launched on November 15 as part of the Artemis 1 mission on NASA’s powerful Space Launch System. A few days ago, the spacecraft ran its engine for three and a half minutes (the longest flight so far) to set a course for a Dec. 11 landing.
The next mission, Artemis II, is scheduled for 2024 to take astronauts along the same path as Artemis I without landing on the moon. Humans will then finally set foot on the lunar surface again with Artemis III due to launch in 2025.
