The agency's uncrewed spaceship reached its farthest distance from Earth on Monday as part of the Artemis I mission. The previous record for the farthest spaceship capable of carrying humans was set by the crew of Apollo 13 in 1970.
While on its journey's zenith, the capsule took a moment to gaze back towards its home planet, and captured a photo for the ages, showing both the Moon and the Earth, each half shrouded in shadow and perfectly in line with each other.
The Moon is larger than Earth but neither could be described as large. It's the ultimate, space-spanning exercise in perspective, where an entire world is reduced to a mere marble, looking no more significant than a plastic Earth over a child's bed.
There are about eight billion of us in the real thing. You wouldn't be able to tell from the high point. There were no buildings, no cities or the Great Wall.
Flight day 13: Orion reached its maximum distance from Earth during the #Artemis I mission when it was 268,563 miles away from our home planet. Orion has now traveled farther than any other spacecraft built for humans. pic.twitter.com/sfdPFjf7Og
— Orion Spacecraft (@NASA_Orion) November 29, 2022
At a NASA news conference, Rick LaBrode said that the imagery was crazy. It's difficult to say what the feeling is. It's really cool to be here.
The Overview Effect is a phenomenon in which many astronauts have reported similar feelings after seeing the Earth from space.
An offworld perspective of our planet isn't the same as a photo's effects. We get an idea from it.
William Shatner of "Star Trek" fame was the first person to experience the Overview Effect. Shatner wrote in his memoir that he only saw death.
It's easy to see why Shatner was so sad. With enough time elapsed, our grievances of the past can seem silly or even funny.
There are more reasons to be hopeful from the spectacle. One day, humans will be able to travel that far, and perhaps beyond, where the Earth may be no more than a Pale Blue dot, or not even a dot at all.
The success of the Artemis mission has been described as "outstanding" by the program manager. NASA is already considering an additional seven test objectives before it's set to fly back around the Moon and finally down to Earth.
The runaway success here, while not without its difficulties, bode well for astronauts planning to set foot on the moon in the future.
There's more on NASA. NASA's Artemis is currently on the moon.
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