A distant Earth and Orion capsule's 'moonikin' are the Artemis mission's first images

NASA’s brand-new Orion spacecraft, designed to take astronauts farther into space than ever before, is currently on its journey toward the moon. Orion completed its thunderous liftoff from Earth at 1:47 a.m. EST yesterday morning, launched via NASA’s powerful Artemis rocket. As it took to the sky, NASA launch commentator Derrol Nail cheered, “We rise together back to the moon and beyond!” Now, the spacecraft is giving us its first images of Earth as it continues its cosmic travels. Orion’s solar array wing camera took the images at over 57,000 miles away from the Earth. They show the Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) engine, which performed an outbound trajectory correction maneuver, which ensures that Orion is on the right path, earlier today. OMS is the main engine: a re-purposed engine that has flown 19 times in other space shuttle flights from 1984 to 2002, according to NASA.