NASA begins live stream of Orion's Moon flyby; watch the historic moment as it unfolds

NASA’s Orion spacecraft is nearing its closest approach to the Moon after it launched on November 16 as part of the Artemis 1 mission. The uncrewed spacecraft will perform a series of trajectory burns to set itself on course for a lunar flyby. The official live stream of the historic moment has begun and you can catch the action live on NASA’s official website, YouTube channel and other social media platforms. 

The mission teams on Earth will perform several powered burns to adjust Orion's trajectory before sending the spacecraft into a distant retrograde orbit (DRO). The DRO is the path around the Moon where a spacecraft travels in the opposite direction the Moon travels around the Earth.

While in this unique orbit, Orion will travel over 60,000 km beyond the Moon, making it the first-ever human-rated space capsule to travel such distance. NASA chose the DRO because it is highly stable owing to the gravitational pull of the Earth and the Moon and this enables a spacecraft to travel with less fuel consumption while remaining in position. 

Notably, Orion will make its closest approach following the trajectory burns at 6:27 pm and it will come as close as approximately 128 km to the lunar surface. According to NASA, you can tune in for Orion's closest approach which begins at 5:45 pm IST. The flyby, however, will not be visible from Earth as Orion will be behind the Moon but the spacecraft will beam imagery using the 16 cameras installed on its several components. 

According to the mission profile, Orion will spend several days in the DRO before it returns home for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on December 11. The Artemis 1 mission is meant to test the capabilities of Orion and the new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket before using them to send astronauts back to the Moon. After six days into the mission, which finally launched after two failed attempts, NASA has confirmed that Orion is working better than expected.