ORLANDO, Fla. — The Artemis I mission brought Orion on its closest approach to the moon while blasting out on its way to an orbit that will take it farther from the Earth than any previous human-rated spacecraft.
Orion entered the moon’s gravitational influence on Sunday and used that power along with a thruster on an outbound powered burn to come within 81 miles from the lunar surface. It will over the next week get as far as about 40,000 miles away from the moon.
That would bring it about 268.000 miles away from Earth surpassing the distance away from Earth traveled by Apollo 13 by about 30,000 miles.
