The uncrewed Orion capsule of NASA's Artemis I mission sailed within 80 miles 130 km from the lunar surface on Monday December 5, achieving the closest approach to the moon for a spacecraft built to carry humans since Apollo 17 flew half a century ago.
The lunar flyby, on the return leg of its debut voyage, came a week after Orion reached its farthest point in space, nearly 270,000 miles from Earth while midway through its 25-day mission, the US space agency said on its website.
Orion passed about 79 miles above the lunar surface on Monday as the spacecraft fired its thrusters for a powered flyby burn designed to change the vehicle's velocity and set it on course for its flight back to Earth.
NASA said the 3 -- 1 2 minute burn would mark the last major spaceflight manoeuvre for Orion before it was due to parachute into the ocean and splash down on December 11.
The last time a spacecraft designed for human travel came as close to the moon as Orion was the last mission of the Apollo programme, Apollo 17, which carried Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt to the lunar surface 50 years ago this month. They were the last of 12 NASA astronauts who walked on the moon during a total of six Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972.
Although Orion has no astronauts aboard -- just a simulated crew of three mannequins -- it flew farther than any previous crew-class spacecraft on the 13th day of its mission. It reached a point 268,563 miles from Earth, more than 20,000 miles beyond the record distance set by the crew of Apollo 13 in 1970, which aborted its lunar landing and returned to Earth after a nearly catastrophic mechanical failure.