After many years of delays and technical setbacks and even being chased back into the Vehicle Assembly Building by a hurricane, NASA has finally launched the Artemis I mission using the largest and most powerful rocket ever flown to hurl an Orion capsule to a distant retrograde orbit round the moon on a 25 day mission to test and prove the system’s ability to return humans to the surface of the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 landed in December of 1972.
Since the launch, Orion has been providing amazing views of the Earth that I honestly never imagined we’d ever see again in my lifetime.
One of the most famous photographs ever taken was during the Apollo 8 mission that orbited the moon and captured a view of the Earth rising over the lunar horizon in 1968.
The cameras and telescopes have gotten way more sophisticated since then and we’ve seen views of the universe that would have been unimaginable not too long ago.
But there’s something special about seeing that beautiful blue marble we call home from well beyond the near Earth orbits where the Earth looks terribly small compared to the vastness of the space round it.
It rather makes one appreciate our beautiful and fragile planet and everyone who has ever seen it from that vantage point has been forever changed as a result.
