Virgin Orbit is set to make the first ever space flight from UK soil, after the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) approved a "historic" first launch license from Spaceport Cornwell. With that in hand, the company plans to launch nine satellites from a LauncherOne rocket aboard its "Cosmic Girl" Boeing 747 aircraft in January next year. 

Virgin Orbit first announced plans to launch from a site at Cornwall Airport Newquay four years ago, so the launch has been many years in the making. The first flight was originally scheduled in for mid-December, but was postponed due to technical issues and the lack of a license.

Despite those concerns, the CAA said the license was issued within 15 months, "putting the UK framework on a competitive footing with international space regulators." The regulator added it took "all reasonable steps" to mitigate safety risks. Spaceport Cornwall, meanwhile, received its launch certification last month.  

In addition to the launch license, Virgin Orbit received a range control license that allows it to issue warning notices and monitor the progress of missions. "Receiving range and launch licenses takes us one step closer to the first satellite launch take-off from UK soil," said Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart. "We are progressing towards the first launch from Cornwall – keeping a strong focus on a safe and successful mission for all."

Virgin Orbit flies LauncherOne under the wing of a 747 to reduce the rocket size and fuel needed while eliminating the need for a vertical launch pad. For its maiden "Start Me up" mission, Cosmic Girl will take off from the spaceport and fly to a height of 35,000 feet, then release the LauncherOne rocket that will take the satellites into orbit. Permits for the nine satellites have yet to be issued, but are reportedly "imminent." 

This is likely the final photo that NASA's Mars InSight lander will ever send back to Earth. The robot has been snapping pics and gathering data about the Martian environment since landing on the planet in November 2018 — and it's been steadily accumulating dust on its solar panels that entire time. As NASA predicted earlier this year, the layer of debris has finally become too thick for the solar panels to operate. The InSight Twitter account officially said goodbye on December 19th with a final image from the surface of Mars.

"My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send," the tweet reads. "Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will – but I’ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me."

You're welcome, metal astronaut.

InSight touched down on Mars on November 26th, 2018. It set up a seismometer on the Martian surface and collected data about marsquakes, which helped NASA scientists compile a clearer picture of the planet's interior structure. Over the past four years, InSight provided data on more than 500 quakes and at least one meteoroid impact. From these reports, NASA researchers concluded Mars' core is about half the size of Earth's and likely composed of lighter elements than previously thought.

NASA announced in May 2022 that InSight would likely go dark by the end of the summer, due to the dust settling on the lander's solar panels. InSight had recently celebrated its fourth anniversary on Mars when it stopped communicating with NASA. In a blog update on December 19th, the agency said the following:

"On Dec. 18, 2022, NASA’s InSight did not respond to communications from Earth. The lander’s power has been declining for months, as expected, and it’s assumed InSight may have reached its end of operations. It’s unknown what prompted the change in its energy; the last time the mission contacted the spacecraft was on Dec. 15, 2022. The mission will continue to try and contact InSight."

Russia's Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, currently docked at the International Space Station (ISS), began leaking coolant Wednesday evening. According to Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, the instrument and assembly compartment’s outer skin was damaged. Fortunately, the crew is safe, and they conducted normal operations afterward. NASA said in a blog post that “the external radiator cooling loop of the Soyuz is the suspected leak source.”

Cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin were already in their suits, preparing for a nearly seven-hour spacewalk, when the crew noticed low-pressure readings. The cosmonauts postponed their walk indefinitely and weren't exposed to the coolant. “Roscosmos is closely monitoring Soyuz spacecraft temperatures, which remain within acceptable limits,” NASA said. “NASA and Roscosmos continue to coordinate external imagery and inspection plans to aid in evaluating the external leak location.” The crew plans to investigate further using the station’s robotic arm.

The Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft launched from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome on September 21st, carrying the two cosmonauts and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio. The Russian space agency added that “a decision will be made” about the cosmonauts’ future aboard the ISS. A spacewalk scheduled for Dec. 21 is postponed indefinitely as the investigation continues.

NASA

Russia’s war in Ukraine has complicated (to say the least) the relationship between NASA and Roscosmos. Earlier this year, Russia said it would pull out of the ISS after 2024 and focus on launching its own space station. Although removing Russia from the ISS would throw a tremendous wrench into the program, the US reportedly had contingency plans even before the invasion.

Amid the pantheon of Greek gods, few are more revered than Artemis, Goddess of the hunt, chastity, and the moon; Mistress of Animals, Daughter of Zeus and twin sister to Apollo. Famed for her pledge to never marry, feared from that time she turned the peeping Acteon into a stag and set his own hunting dogs upon him, Artemis has stood as a feminist icon for millenia. It seems only fitting then that NASA names after her a trailblazing mission that will see both the first woman and first person of color set foot on the moon, ahead of humanity’s first off-planet colony.

In fact, NASA has been naming its missions after Zeus’ progeny since the advent of spaceflight. There was the Mercury Program (the Roman spelling of Hermes) in 1958, then Gemini in ‘68 followed by Apollo in ‘73. NASA took a quick break on the naming convention during the Shuttle era but revived it when it formally established the Artemis program in 2017. Working with the European Space Agency (ESA), Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and a slew of private corporations, NASA’s goal for Artemis is simple: to re-establish a human foothold on the moon for the first time since 1972, and stay there.

NASA is building a coalition of partnerships with industry, nations and academia that will help us get to the moon quickly and sustainably, together,” then-NASA director Jim Bridenstine said in 2020. “Our work to catalyze the US space economy with public-private partnerships has made it possible to accomplish more than ever before. The budget we need to achieve everything laid out in this plan represents bipartisan support from the Congress.”

“Under the Artemis program, humanity will explore regions of the moon never visited before, uniting people around the unknown, the never seen, and the once impossible,” he continued. “We will return to the moon robotically beginning next year, send astronauts to the surface within four years, and build a long-term presence on the Moon by the end of the decade.”

Red Huber via Getty Images

Just as Artemis the Goddess grew out of earlier pre-Hellenistic mythology, Artemis the Program was born from the ashes of the earlier Constellation program from the early 2000s which sought to land on the moon by 2020 — specifically the Ares I, Ares V, and Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle that were developed as part of that effort. In 2010, then-President Barack Obama announced that the non-Orion bits of Constellation were being axed and simultaneously called for $6 billion in additional funding as well as the development of a new heavy lift rocket program with a goal of putting humans on Mars by the mid-2030s. This became the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 and formally kicked off development of the Space Launch System, the most powerful rocket NASA has built to date.

The Artemis program was helped further in December of 2017 when former President Donald Trump signed Space Policy Directive 1 (SPD 1). That policy change, “provides for a US-led, integrated program with private sector partners for a human return to the moon, followed by missions to Mars and beyond” and authorized the campaign that would become Artemis two years later. In 2019, then-Vice President Mike Pence announced that the program’s goals were accelerating, the moon landing goal pushed up four years to 2024 though its original goal of Mars in the 2030s remained unchanged.

“The directive I am signing today will refocus America’s space program on human exploration and discovery,” Trump said at the time. “It marks a first step in returning American astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972, for long-term exploration and use. This time, we will not only plant our flag and leave our footprints — we will establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars, and perhaps someday, to many worlds beyond.”

Bang, zoom, straight to the moon

NASA

Now, we know NASA can put people on the moon — it’s the keeping them there, alive, that’s the issue. The moon, for all its tide-inducing benefits here on Earth, is generally inhospitable to life, what with its general lack of breathable atmosphere and liquid water, weak gravity, massive temperature swings and razor-sharp, statically-charged dust. The first colonists will need power, heat, atmosphere, potable water — all of which will have to either be brought from Earth or extracted locally from the surrounding regolith.

Complicating matters, the Moon, at 230,000 miles away, is about a thousand times farther than the International Space Station, and getting a crew with everything they need to survive for more than a few days is going to require multiple trips — not just from Earth orbit to the moon but also from lunar orbit down to the surface and back. But high-risk, high-reward logistical nightmares are kind of NASA’s whole deal.

As such, the Artemis program is split between the SLS missions, which will eventually bring the human crew to the moon, and the support missions, which will bring everything else. That includes robotic rovers, the Human Landing System, as well as moonbase and Gateway components along with all of the logistical support and infrastructure that they will require.

Artemis SLS missions

The SLS missions are built around NASA’s new Deep Space Exploration System, which comprises the SLS super heavy-lift launch vehicle, the Orion Spacecraft and the Exploration Ground Systems at Kennedy Space Center (KSC).

NASA

NASA’s deep space exploration system

The Space Launch System is the single most powerful rocket humanity has built and, given its modular, evolvable design, will likely continue to be for the foreseeable future. Its initial configuration, dubbed Block 1, consists of just the core stage with four RS-25 engines and two, five-segment solid rocket boosters. Once the SLS breaks atmosphere, its Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage takes over for in-space propulsion.

Those RS-25’s are the same engines that flew on the Space Shuttle. Aerojet Rocketdyne of Sacramento, California is updating and upgrading 16 of them for use in the modern era — bringing them up to standard for use with the SLS — with a new engine controller, new nozzle insulation, and 512,000 pounds of thrust. Altogether, the core stage will produce 8.8 million pounds of thrust and be capable of pushing 27 metric tons (22,000 sqft) of cargo out to the moon at speeds in excess of 24,500 miles per hour. The Artemis 1 mission that launched in November, as well as the next two Artemis missions, are slash will be powered by Block 1 rockets.

NASA

Block 1B rockets will include an Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) built by Boeing and composed of “four RL10C-3 engines that produce almost four times more thrust than the one RL10B-2 engine that powers the ICPS,” per NASA. That additional engine will enable the space agency to haul 38 tons of cargo out of Earth’s gravity well. This updated block will provide NASA a bit more flexibility in its launches. A 1B rocket can be configured to lift the Orion spacecraft or cargo loads into deep space as easily as it can be for hauling large cargoes to the moon or Mars. NASA plans to lift unwieldy portions of the moonbase and Gateway into space with it.

The SLS’ final form (for now) will be Block 2. Standing more than 30 stories tall, weighing the equivalent of 10 fully-loaded 747’s, the block 2 blasting 9.2 million pounds of thrust (20 percent more than the Saturn V) to push 46 metric tons of stuff (taking up as much as 54,000 square feet) into deep space. Once that configuration comes online, NASA expects it to take on much of the heavy lifting (sorry not sorry) in delivering crews and cargo to the moon.

Orion spacecraft

Riding atop the SLS’s multi-ton controlled explosions is the Orion Spacecraft, the first crew capsule designed for deep space exploration in more than a generation. Designed and built with help from the ESA, the Orion sandwiches a four-person crew cabin in between a services module that holds all of the important life support, navigation and propulsion systems, and a Launch Abort System (LAS) that will forcibly eject the crew capsule from the larger launch vehicle if a catastrophic failure occurs during takeoff.

The 50-foot tall LAS weighs 16,000 pounds and is designed to engage within milliseconds of a launch going sideways, lifting the crew cabin away from the rest of the SLS at Mach 1.2 using the 400,000 pounds of thrust produced by the abort motor. Its attitude control motor provides another 7,000 pounds of thrust to keep the capsule upright during escape while the jettison motor will separate the LAS from the cabin once clear, the latter deploying a parachute ahead of its upcoming water landing.

The LAS actually predates Orion by four years. The LAS was first integrated into a Delta IV and flown at the White Sands test facility in New Mexico in 2010 while the (uncrewed) Orion Exploration Flight Test-1 didn’t take off for its four-hour, two orbit jaunt until 2014.

The Orion main cabin is just under 16 feet tall and just over 16 feet in diameter. Its four wing solar array produces 11kW of power and the attached service module holds enough air and water to keep the crew alive, if a bit panicked and sir-crazy, for up to three weeks.

Exploration ground systems

Handout via Getty Images

Located at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Artemis program’s Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) is tasked with developing and enacting the facilities and operations necessary to conduct SLS missions. That includes the Vehicle Assembly Building, the Launch Control Center, the Firing Rooms, Mobile Launchers 1 and 2, the Crawlers that haul rockets out to the launchpads, and also the launchpads — specifically Launch Pad 39B. Teams have been working to modernize many of those facilities and NASA notes that it, “has successfully upgraded its processes, facilities, and ground support equipment to safely handle rockets and spacecraft during assembly, transport, and launch.”

NASA already has five main Artemis launches scheduled. The uncrewed Artemis I, again, successfully launched in November. Artemis II, which will carry four live astronauts for the first time but only loop around the moon, launches in 2024. Artemis III will go up in 2025 and is expected to be the first to actually set down on the moon. Artemis IV is slated for 2027 and will deliver half of the lunar Gateway (as well as debut the EUS) while Artemis V is set to deliver the other half of the Gateway in 2028. From there, NASA has some thoughts on Artemis missions VI (2029) through X (2033) but has not finalized any details as of yet.

Artemis support missions

“We need several years in orbit and on the surface of the moon to build operational confidence for conducting long-term work and supporting life away from Earth before we can embark on the first multi-year human mission to Mars,” Bridenstine said in 2020. “The sooner we get to the moon, the sooner we get American astronauts to Mars.”

NASA

But before we can build confidence in our ability to survive on Mars, we need to build confidence in our ability to survive on the moon. The Artemis support missions will do just that. The Capstone Mission ("Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment"), for example, successfully launched a 55-pound cubesat in June to confirm NASA’s math for the much larger Gateway’s future orbital path. While in orbit, the Capstone will communicate and coordinate some of its maneuvers with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter which has been circling the moon since 2009.

In 2023, NASA also plans to launch the VIPER robotic rover to the moon’s South Pole where it will search the lowest, darkest, coldest craters for accessible water ice. Finding a source for H2O is of paramount importance to the long-term viability of the colony. In space, water isn’t just for drinking and bathing — it can be split into its component atoms and used to fuel our oxidizing rockets, potentially turning the Moon into an orbital gas station as we push farther out from Earth. The rover, and others like it, will be delivered to the surface as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.

It wasn’t until the mid 1990s that NASA even confirmed the presence of water ice on the moon and only two years ago did they discovered ice accessible from the moon’s surface. “We had indications that H2O – the familiar water we know – might be present on the sunlit side of the moon,” Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, said at the time. “Now we know it is there. This discovery challenges our understanding of the lunar surface and raises intriguing questions about resources relevant for deep space exploration.”

Similarly, any habitat established on the surface will need an ample supply of electricity to remain online. Solar charging is one obvious choice (that lack of atmosphere is finally coming in handy) but NASA has never been one to underprepare and has already selected three aerospace companies to develop nuclear power sources for potential deployment.

Gateway

NASA

In addition to a surface installation, NASA plans on putting a full-fledged space station, dubbed the Lunar Gateway, into orbit around the moon where it will serve much the same purpose as the ISS does today. Visiting researchers will stay aboard the pressurized Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module where they’ll have access to research facilities, remote rover controls and docking for both Orion capsules from Earth and HLS (Human Landing System) landers to the moon’s surface. A 60kW solar plant will provide power to the station, which also serves as a communications relay hub with the planet. The station’s position around the moon will also provide a unique astronomical perspective for future research.

The Gateway will very much be an international operation. As NASA points out, Canada’s CSA is providing “advanced robotics” for use upon the station, the ESA is supplying a second living module called the International Habitat (IHab) as well as the ESPRIT communications module and an array of research cubesats. Japan’s JAXA will kick in additional habitat components and assist with resupply logistics.

Human Landing System and rovers

From the Gateway, astronauts and researchers will ferry down to the moon’s surface to collect samples, run experiments and conduct observations aboard the Human Landing System, a reusable lunar lander program currently being operated out of Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

NASA selected SpaceX’s Starship for its initial landing system in April 2021, awarding the company $2.9 billion to further the vehicle’s development. The agency then awarded SpaceX with another $1.15 billion this past November as part of the Option B contract modification. The extra money will help fund planned upgrades to the spacecraft, which is being modified from the base Starship design for use on and around the moon’s surface.

“Continuing our collaborative efforts with SpaceX through Option B furthers our resilient plans for regular crewed transportation to the lunar surface and establishing a long-term human presence under Artemis,” Lisa Watson-Morgan, NASA HLS program manager, said in November. “This critical work will help us focus on the development of sustainable, service-based lunar landers anchored to NASA’s requirements for regularly recurring missions to the lunar surface.”

Researchers, however, will not be content to travel nearly a quarter million miles just to set down on the moon and look out the lander’s windows. Instead, they’ll be free to wander around the surface safely ensconced in spacewalk equipment supplied by Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace.

“With these awards, NASA and our partners will develop advanced, reliable spacesuits that allow humans to explore the cosmos unlike ever before,” said Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, said in June. “By partnering with industry, we are efficiently advancing the necessary technology to keep Americans on a path of successful discovery on the International Space Station and as we set our sights on exploring the lunar surface.”

Those researchers won’t be on foot either. Just as the Apollo astronauts famously bounced around on NASA’s first-gen lunar rovers, the Artemis missions will use new Lunar Terrain Vehicles. The unpressurized buggies are currently still in development but NASA expects to have a finalized proposal ready by next year and have the LTVs ready for surface service by 2028.

The Artemis Base Camp

When not in use, the LTVs will be parked at NASA’s Artemis Base Camp at the lunar South Pole, alongside a pressurized version designed for longer-duration expeditions. The surface habitat itself will be able to support up to four residents at a time and provide communications, equipment storage, power and, most importantly, robust radiation shielding (and there’s the downside of not having an atmosphere). A site hasn’t yet been officially selected, though mission planners are looking for areas near the region’s permanently shadowed craters where water ice is expected to be most easily accessible (aside from the negative 280 degree temperatures and perpetual darkness).

“On each new trip, astronauts are going to have an increasing level of comfort with the capabilities to explore and study more of the moon than ever before,” Kathy Lueders, associate administrator for human spaceflight at NASA Headquarters, said in 2020. “With more demand for access to the moon, we are developing the technologies to achieve an unprecedented human and robotic presence 240,000 miles from home. Our experience on the moon this decade will prepare us for an even greater adventure in the universe — human exploration of Mars.”

A NASA satellite launch is scheduled to take place today, but this isn't any old project. The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite will track the vast majority of water on Earth for the first time. It will measure the depth of oceans, rivers and lakes to help scientists track how they change over time. SWOT will help scientists better understand how oceans absorb carbon and atmospheric heat, which can help to moderate climate change and global temperature changes.

Observations from SWOT should help to improve flood forecasts while bolstering models that are used to monitor droughts and predict rising sea levels. On top of that, the data that the satellite records will include details about ocean tides, currents and storm surges, as well as river water level measurements.

The satellite will use a radar-based system to survey water levels. The Ka-band Radar Interferometer (Karin) bounces signals off of two antennas on either side of SWOT. This, NASA said, will allow for a much larger view of Earth's surface with high resolution and accuracy. SWOT should be able to measure large tracks of water across the planet in a relatively short period of time.

Scientists will be able to observe ocean features at 10 times the resolution of current tech. SWOT will be able to monitor almost every river that's wider than 330 feet (100 meters) and north of a million lakes that are larger than 15 acres (62,500 square meters). All told, the satellite will survey water on 90 percent of the planet's surface.

NASA jointly developed SWOT with French space agency Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales. They had help from the Canadian Space Agency and the UK Space Agency.

SWOT is scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Liftoff is targeted for 6:46AM ET and NASA's launch coverage will get underway at 6AM. You can watch the livestream below:

NASA announced today that the Perseverance rover has captured audio from a Martian dust devil for the first time. But the clip not only treats us to the novelty of hearing an extraterrestrial vortex; it could also help scientists better understand how dust might affect future Mars missions.

The rover's microphones picked up the dust devil on September 27th, 2021. To the casual ear, it sounds similar to a microphone picking up a wind gust on Earth, but scientists can learn much more. “As the dust devil passed over Perseverance we could actually hear individual impacts of grains on the rover,” Naomi Murdoch, planetary scientist and the author of new report, toldThe Washington Post. “We could actually count them.”

Dust is a significant factor in planning for Mars missions. It can erode a spacecraft’s heat shields, damage scientific instruments, incapacitate parachutes and smother solar panels.

Scientists estimate the recorded whirlwind measured about 82 feet wide by 387 feet high. (Although that may sound intimidating, this relatively minor storm didn’t damage the rover.) As you can hear below (via Science News), the clip includes a brief pause in the turbulence as the dust devil’s eye passes over the rover.

Perseverance also captured images (also included in the recording) of the approaching storm. Scientists had to coordinate their instruments to boost the odds of recording a storm. The rover only records sound snippets lasting under three minutes and only does so eight times per month. That meant timing them for when dust devils are most likely to hit while pointing its cameras where they’re most likely to approach. In this case, that preparation — and no small degree of luck — paid off.

“I can’t think of a previous case where so much data from so many instruments contributed to characterizing a single dust devil,” said John Edward Moores, a planetary scientist at York University. “Had the [camera] been pointing in a different direction or the microphone observation been scheduled just a few seconds later, key pieces of the story would be missing. Sometimes it helps to be lucky in science!”

The roughly 10-ft.-long Perseverance rover launched on July 30th, 2020 and touched Martian soil on February 18th, 2021. NASA uses the vehicle to explore the Jezero crater and search for signs of ancient microbial life as part of the Mars 2020 mission.

NASA's Artemis 1 mission has returned to Earth following a successful trip around the Moon. On Saturday, at approximately 12:40PM ET, the agency's Orion crew vessel landed off the coast of Baja, California. On its way to the Pacific Ocean, Orion performed what’s known as a skip entry. After entering the Earth’s upper atmosphere, the crew vessel briefly used its own lift to “skip” back out before re-entering for the final descent. In doing so, it became the spacecraft designed to carry humans to carry out such a maneuver. 

Getting here wasn’t easy. NASA’s next-generation Space Launch System gave the agency plenty of headaches before it successfully carried Artemis 1 to space on November 16th. NASA spent much of the summer troubleshooting fuel leaks and engine problems. Come fall, Hurricane Ian and later tropical storm Nicole further delayed the launch of Artemis 1, but after all of that was said and done, the SLS produced one of the most memorable rocket launches in recent history. A nighttime flight saw the rocket lit up the Kennedy Space Center.         

More broadly, the conclusion of Artemis 1 caps off one of NASA's most successful years in recent memory.

Developing... 

The Biden administration is reportedly drafting an executive order designed to modernize federal space regulations. According to Reuters, White House officials have hosted multiple “listening sessions” since November 14th. The goal of those meetings has been to hear from private space companies and the rules they would like to see introduced.

Reuters reports the White House wants to simplify licensing and approval procedures for more routine space activities, including things like rocket launches and satellite deployments. Among the measures the Biden administration is considering is an order that would task the Department of Commerce with creating an online tool that would guide companies through the licensing requirements from each federal agency. The team drafting the order is also looking for ways to push Congress to give certain federal agencies oversight of space activities that aren’t covered by current laws, including things like asteroid mining and space junk removal. The order could be ready for President Biden to sign by early next year.

The administration’s push to streamline space regulations comes as companies like Blue Origin prepare to spend billions on projects like Orbital Reef, a space station the firm hopes to start assembling in low Earth orbit by the end of the decade. The next decade is also likely to see a new space race between the US and China play out as the rival superpowers look to put humans back on the Moon. Private space firms are likely to be critical in the outcome of that conflict.

Orion just made its final pass around the moon on its way to Earth, and NASA has released some of the spacecraft's best photos so far. Taken by a high-resolution camera (actually a heavily modified GoPro Hero 4) mounted on the tip of Orion's solar arrays, they show the spacecraft rounding the Moon then getting a closeup shot of the far side. 

The photos Orion snapped on its first near pass to the Moon were rather grainy and blown out, likely because they were captured with Orion's Optical Navigation Camera rather than the solar array-mounted GoPros. Other GoPro shots were a touch overexposed, but NASA appears to have nailed the settings with its latest series of shots. 

Space photos were obviously not the primary goal of the Artemis I mission, but they're important for public relations, as NASA learned many moons ago. It was a bit surprising that NASA didn't show some high-resolution closeups of the Moon's surface when it passed by the first time, but better late than never.

Orion's performance so far has been "outstanding," program manager Howard Hu told reporters last week. It launched on November 15th as part of the Artemis 1 mission atop NASA's mighty Space Launch System. Days ago, the craft completed a three and a half minute engine burn (the longest on the trip so far) to set it on course for a splashdown on December 11th.

The next mission, Artemis II, is scheduled in 2024 to carry astronauts on a similar path to Artemis I without landing on the moon. Then, humans will finally set foot on the lunar surface again with Artemis III, slated for launch in 2025. 

The Orion spacecraft's record-setting distance from Earth made for stunning photography, apparently. NASA has shared a photo taken by the Artemis I vehicle on Monday showing both Earth and the Moon in the background. Much like some Apollo photography or Voyager 1's "Pale Blue Dot," the picture puts humanity's home in perspective — our world is just one small planet in a much larger cosmos.

Orion took the snapshot around its maximum distance from Earth of 268,563 miles. That's the farthest any human-oriented spacecraft has traveled, beating even Apollo 13's record of 248,655 miles from 1970. Notably, Artemis I represents the first time explorers intended to travel this far out — Apollo 13 only ventured so far from Earth because NASA's emergency flight plan required the Moon as a slingshot.

Ars Technicanotes that this early Artemis flight has so far surpassed NASA's expectations. While the mission team has only completed 31 out of 124 core objectives so far, it's adding goals like extended thruster tests. About half of the remaining activities are in progress, with the rest largely dependent on returning to Earth.

Orion is expected to splash down off the San Diego coast on December 11th. The Artemis program has dealt with numerous delays, and now isn't expected to land humans on the Moon until 2025 or 2026. NASA originally hoped for a lunar landing in 2024. Still, Artemis I's current performance suggests the space agency's efforts are finally paying off.