Orion took a "family portrait" of the Earth and the Moon from an unusual angle

The European Space Agency reports that the Orion spacecraft of NASA's Artemis mission

performed a key maneuver to get accelerationusing the gravity of the Moon. As it approached the surface of the satellite, cameras mounted on solar panels took a selfie of the spacecraft against the backdrop of the Moon-Earth system.

The picture was taken with a Go-Pro camera,attached to the end of one of the four solar arrays 7 m long. Data exchange between the camera and the ship's main control systems is provided wirelessly.

Orion ship, Moon and Earth. Image: NASA, ESA

During the maneuver that completed the Orion,the launch of the main engine of the European service module for only 2.5 minutes corrected the orbit of the ship so that the natural gravity of the Moon gave the ship additional acceleration. ESA announces the successful completion of the maneuver.

The maneuver will help the ship leave the sphere of influencethe gravitational pull of the Moon and continue moving to enter a retrograde orbit. Orion will fly approximately 92,194 km beyond the Moon at its farthest point from the lunar surface during the mission. 

Scheme of the mission "Artemis-1". Animation: ESA

It is expected that already on November 26 the ship will beatthe record set by Apollo 13 for the longest distance from Earth that a spacecraft intended for humans is located. Recall that during this historic mission, the maximum distance was 400,171 km from Earth. "Orion" will not stop there and by November 28 should fly away from our planet at 432,193 km.

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