On flight day six of the Artemis II mission, the Orion spacecraft was captured in a moment of celestial alignment, with a waxing crescent Moon in the foreground and a smaller crescent Earth in the distance about to set below the lunar horizon.
The beautiful image was taken during Orion’s lunar flyby as the crew journeyed farther from home than any humans before them, surpassing the record previously held by the crew of the Apollo 13 mission, and reaching a distance of 406 772 km from Earth.
Part of Orion’s European Service Module (ESM) is visible in the frame, including one of its four solar arrays and a pod of reaction control system thrusters. The four solar arrays are built in Europe, and capture sunlight to provide power for the spacecraft throughout its journey. The ESM also houses six pods with four reaction control system thrusters for a total of 24. These are Orion’s smallest engines and they are used to fine-tune the spacecraft’s attitude, or orientation in space.
Artemis II began on 2 April at 00:35 CEST (1 April 18:35 local time), when NASA’s Space Launch System rocket launched Orion and its four astronauts into space. Just 20 minutes after liftoff, the European-built solar arrays deployed and began supplying electricity to the spacecraft.
On flight day two, the main engine performed the mission critical trans-lunar injection burn, firing for 350 seconds to bring Orion and its crew into a free-return trajectory that swings around the Moon and comes back to Earth. Throughout the mission, ESM’s eight auxiliary thrusters and 24 reaction control thrusters were used to fine-tune Orion’s trajectory where needed.
As the crew approach Earth, the crew module and ESM will separate; ESM will burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, while the crew module will splash down in the Pacific Ocean.
From Earth, European teams closely follow these manoeuvres from the Eagle room ESA’s ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands and from the Orion Mission Evaluation Room at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, United States.
Behind the scenes of this serene and selenic view, and yet still in the picture, ESA’s European Service Module and European teams across the world play a vital role to bring humankind back towards the Moon.