We are living in a new era in the history of space exploration. Although in recent years we had seen great achievements in terms of launches and technology by private companies, the POT Little by little, it has resumed its role as the leader and maximum benchmark in this field.
This is how the Space Exploration Agency has just made history by breaking one of its own records that had not been surpassed for almost half a century.
And it is that between the 60s and 70s there were large and ambitious projects with launches that went very far from our planet.
To then stop promoting this kind of missions, especially after the emergence of delicate incidents, such as the Challenger, which cost the lives of innocent people.
For many years this institution was relatively asleep, but now with the Artemis mission and its renewed ambition to return to the Moon, they have begun to make important and historic advances.
NASA breaks the distance record of Apollo 13 with the Orion capsule of the Artemis mission
A report from colleagues from EngadgetThe crew capsule of the Artemis I mission, named Orion, has set a new record for a NASA flight.
Since at approximately 8:40 am (ET) this Saturday, November 26, 2022, the capsule became the one that has flown the farthest of any other spacecraft designed to carry human astronauts.
With this, NASA has officially surpassed its own previous record established with Apollo 13 in 1970.
With a speed of 3,300 kilometers per hour, Orion has already traveled more than 401,000 kilometers from Earth, thus remaining “barely” 86,000 kilometers from the Moon.
The previous record for Apollo 13 was 400,171 kilometers and if all goes well, NASA estimates that on Monday, October 28, the Orion unmanned spacecraft will reach the maximum distance from Earth that it will reach on this mission: 430,000 kilometers.
As you may recall, NASA went through many false starts, cancellations, and last minute changes of plans before launching this spacecraft.
The Artemis I unmanned mission at this time has as its primary objective to prepare the path of lunar exploration to later send astronauts to the Moon and its vicinity.
This record is therefore more than important.