'Back to the Moon & beyond': Relive NASA's historic Artemis 1 launch from this new angle

It has been eleven days since the Artemis 1 mission launched and revived humanity's hope of returning to the Moon later this decade. On November 16, the uncrewed Artemis 1 lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to test the brand new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft that will soon carry astronauts to the lunar surface. While we saw the flawless performance of the launch vehicle, Orion seems to be working fine except it recently went off the grid for 47 minutes. 

However, the performance of the SLS rocket, which made Orion's lunar journey possible, cannot be overlooked considering how a large faction of the scientific community called it a waste of money and even outdated (as it still uses technological ideas from the Space Shuttle era). On November 16, it launched as the world's most powerful rocket by generating 8.8 million pounds of peak thrust, something which managed to blow the doors off the elevators at NASA's launch tower. 

The rocket's liftoff is certainly one of the most memorable moments of this year and several videos showcasing the historic moment are surfacing. The European Space Agency (ESA), which built the European Service Module (ESM) for the Orion spacecraft, has shared a new video captured by a camera on board the rocket. 

Artemis 1 to enter the second half of the mission

Artemis 1 is estimated to last 25 days, 11 hours and 36 minutes and is nearing the second half of the mission. As of November 27, Orion has entered the distant retrograde orbit (DRO) around the Moon where it will spend around three more days before beginning its journey back to Earth. The DRO is a path where a spacecraft travels in the direction opposite to the Moon's orbit around the Earth. According to NASA, Orion will be more than 64,000 km above the lunar surface when it travels half of the DRO before using the Moon's gravity to slingshot toward Earth.

Notably, Orion has broken the record of being the first human-rated spacecraft to travel the farthest distance from Earth. The record previously belonged to the 'Odyssey' spacecraft which went 4,00,171 kilometres from Earth during the Apollo 13 mission on April 15, 1972.