The uncrewed Orion capsule of NASA's Artemis I mission sailed within 80 miles (130 km) of the lunar surface on Monday, achieving the closest approach to the moon for a spacecraft built to carry humans since Apollo 17 flew half a century ago.
The capsule's lunar flyby, on the return leg of its debut voyage, came a week after Orion reached its farthest point in space, nearly 270,000 miles from Earth while midway through its 25-day mission, the U.S. space agency said on its website.
NASA said the 3-1/2-minute burn would mark the last major spaceflight maneuver for Orion before it was due to parachute into the sea and splash down on Dec. 11. Although Orion has no astronauts aboard - just a simulated crew of three mannequins - it flew farther than any previous "crew-class" spacecraft on the 13th day of its mission. It reached a point 268,563 miles from Earth, nearly 20,000 miles beyond the record distance set by the crew of Apollo 13 in 1970, which aborted its lunar landing and returned to Earth after a nearly catastrophic mechanical failure.
If the mission succeeds, a crewed Artemis II flight around the moon and back could come as early as 2024, followed within a few years by the program's first lunar landing of astronauts with Artemis III. Sending astronauts to Mars is expected to take at least another decade and a half to achieve.
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