Nasa’s Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft performs close moon flyby.

Orion zoomed just 80 miles (130 kilometers) above the lunar surface Monday (Nov. 21) at 7:44 a.m. ET. and completed an engine burn needed to continue its historic mission.

Artemis 1’s uncrewed Orion spacecraft has been cruising toward the moon since Wednesday morning (Nov. 16), when it launched atop NASA’s gigantic Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. 

The burn “sent Orion close enough to the lunar surface to leverage the moon’s gravitational force, and swing the spacecraft once around the moon toward entry into a distant retrograde orbit,” NASA’s Sandra Jones said during an Artemis 1 livestream Monday (Nov. 21) at 8:28 a.m. EST, nearly an hour after the burn took place.

@space

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