In the early hours of Wednesday morning, NASA’s Artemis I mission successfully launched from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center — and as you can probably imagine, the views were pretty spectacular.
The Artemis I mission got off to a rocky start, with failed launches and further delays on the day preceding the final, successful launch a little before 2 a.m. ET (our live blog has a full breakdown of events as they unfolded).
Now, with the Orion spacecraft beginning its mission to the moon, NASA shared the following footage on Twitter on Wednesday.
“As @NASA_Orion begins the #Artemis I mission to the Moon, the spacecraft captured these stunning views of our home planet,” wrote NASA.
Orion, while currently without a crew, is essentially paving the way for a deep space flight that will one day carry astronauts. The plan for the current mission is that Orion will travel around the moon, heading a quarter of a million miles away from Earth before swinging back to return home on Dec. 11.
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You can read a full breakdown of how the launch unfolded here. NASA will also be sharing more footage and images as the mission progresses, so stay tuned.
Update Nov. 16 at 11:45 a.m. ET: NASA has shared livestreamed footage of Earth from the Orion spacecraft, like the image just below.
Credit: NASA