"Houston, we have a new record": 'Orion' goes further than any other ship designed to carry astronauts

"Houston, we have a new record."

With this mythical expression, NASA's social networks announced that the

capsule had just broken the distance record for a ship capable of transporting humans.

At the moment, only "capable" because on this trip his crew is made up of three mannequins instrumented to detect radiation and acceleration, a couple of stuffed animals and hundreds of Snoopy pins.

The previous mark corresponded to

, which, badly damaged by an explosion on board, had to follow a hastily calculated trajectory to return them home with a minimum of maneuvering.

As NASA explains: “

was designed to take humans further into space than ever before and bring them back to Earth safely.”

On Tuesday the capsule skimmed the Moon just over 100 kilometers above its surface, on Saturday it exceeded 400,171 kilometers from Earth established by

(on April 15, 1970) and then moved away until it exceeded 432,192 kilometers (and about 70,000 on the Moon).

And it has done so by traveling through a strange orbit characterized as "distant and retrograde."

The meaning of "distant" is obvious;

The "retrograde" refers to the fact that Artemis revolves around the Moon in the opposite direction to what our satellite does around the Earth.

That orbit is special in that it is so wide that it would encompass not only the Moon, but also the L1 Lagrange point, where the attraction of Earth and Moon balance.

In reality,

is now navigating an invisible landscape of gravitational valleys and hills that fluctuates minute by minute as our satellite progresses along its path.

Houston, we have a new record 🌎

On Saturday Nov. 26, at 8:40 am ET, @NASA_Orion broke the record for the farthest distance traveled from Earth of a human-rated spacecraft.

The record was previously held by Apollo 13 at 248,655 statute miles from Earth.

Go Artemis!

pic.twitter.com/B4hcXHJESC

— NASA's Johnson Space Center (@NASA_Johnson) November 26, 2022

Artemis has managed to enter orbit with minimal fuel consumption and has done so by taking advantage of that ghostly gravitational

and also the pull offered by the Moon itself.

Its engine has spent just two tons, four times less than what the

used for the same manoeuvre.

That is why

's engine is much less powerful than it was 50 years ago and its propellant reserves are scarcer.

It's also a salvage from the old

: it was one of two Orbital Braking Reactors and had flown a dozen times on various missions.

capsule

is now so far from the Moon that it has moved out of its sphere of influence and looks more like a satellite spinning in its own orbit around Earth.

The vagaries of celestial mechanics mean that the moment at which the maximum distance to the Moon is reached does not coincide with that of the Earth.

The first was on Friday night;

the second, three days later.

And while

continues on its way, another much smaller satellite — CAPSTONE — has been exploring another very special trajectory for 10 days now: the halo orbit, a very elongated ellipse that passes over both poles of the Moon.

It is the one that

will follow when it takes on board the first astronauts to set foot on the Moon again.

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