Nasa’s Orion capsule entered an orbit stretching tens of thousands of miles around the moon on Friday, as it approached the halfway mark of its moon mission.
The unmanned test flight was 238,000 miles from Earth yesterday and is expected to reach a maximum distance of almost 270,000 miles in a few days.
The capsule and its three test dummies entered lunar orbit more than a week after launching on the 4.0 billion US dollars (£330 billion) Artemis programme demo that is meant to pave the way for astronauts.
It will remain in this broad but stable orbit for nearly a week, completing just half a lap before heading home.
That will set a new distance record for a capsule designed to carry people one day. “It is a statistic, but it’s symbolic for what it represents,” Jim Geffre, an Orion manager, said in a Nasa interview earlier in the week.
“It’s about challenging ourselves to go farther, stay longer and push beyond the limits of what we’ve previously explored.” Nasa considers this a dress rehearsal for the next moon flyby in 2024, with astronauts.
A lunar landing by astronauts could follow as soon as 2025. Astronauts last visited the moon 50 years ago during the Apollo 17 mission.
Mission Control in Houston lost contact with the capsule earlier in the week for almost an hour.
The Deep Space Network and Orion’s communication link were being adjusted at the time by controllers. The spacecraft was said to be in good condition by officials.