Plenty of people have seen a solar eclipse from the ground. But now NASA’s Artemis I mission is providing a rare view of the Moon eclipsing the Earth in space.
The uncrewed Orion capsule recorded the imagery on Monday as the spacecraft reached 268,563 miles away from Earth—"farther than any other spacecraft built for humans," NASA says.
The flightpath sent Orion beyond the orbit of the Moon. As a result, the capsule was able to capture footage of both the Moon and Earth together in space. The footage even shows the Moon about to eclipse Earth as Orion travels further out.
However, Orion wasn’t able to capture live imagery of a full eclipse. On Twitter, NASA noted: “As with all space communications, we need line of sight to transmit and receive signals, and right now the Moon is between Orion and NASA’s Deep Space Network tracking stations.”
The Artemis program represents NASA’s effort to send human astronauts back to the lunar surface. The Artemis I mission successfully launched from Earth earlier this month using NASA’s giant Space Launch System (SLS), the most powerful rocket currently in existence. The uncrewed Orion space capsule is now bound for a 25-day flight around the Moon before the craft splashes down back to Earth.
Future Artemis missions will have human crews. But NASA now projects that the Artemis II mission won’t occur until 2023, with an Artemis III moon landing in 2025. In the meantime, the public can track the current progress of the Artemis I mission through NASA’s dedicated website.