NASA officials say Artemis 1 mission teams are “giddy” after witnessing how well their Orion spacecraft has been performing so far on its way towards lunar orbit.

Artemis 1 launched at 1:47 a.m. EST (0647 GMT) on Nov. 16, blasting off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida in a spectacular display of the sheer power of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The Orion spacecraft reached Earth orbit shortly after, and then at 87 minutes after launch performed a so-called Trans Lunar Injection burn to send it hurtling towards the moon. On Monday (Nov. 21), Orion performed another burn to send the spacecraft close enough to the lunar surface to leverage the moon’s gravity to pull the spacecraft around the moon into a distant retrograde lunar orbit.

There have been 24 coronal mass ejections in the past week alone.

As NASA’s Orion spacecraft prepares to fly by the Moon, sky gazers can expect another little treat in the skies as a minor geomagnetic storm is expected to hit the Earth, EarthSky.

Over the past week, our Sun has seen some intense activity. Usually, when activity on the Sun increases, the chances of a geomagnetic storm on Earth also increase. Geomagnetic storms carry risks to infrastructure and communications on the planet. However, in the past week, our planet has been a bit lucky it wasn’t in the line of fire.

The Artemis mission is preparing astronauts for this lofty goal.

Humans are on course to be living and even working on the moon by 2030, a NASA official told BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg program.

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Howard Hu, the head of the U.S. agency’s Orion lunar spacecraft programme, said astronauts could stay on the celestial object for extended periods of time by the end of this decade.

The Space Launch System has roared to life, launching NASA’s Orion Spacecraft on its journey for #Artemis I! Look out Moon, we are on the way!

The Artemis mission is preparing astronauts for this lofty goal.

Humans are on course to be living and even working on the moon by 2030, a NASA official told BBC’s Sunday.

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Howard Hu, the head of the U.S. agency’s Orion lunar spacecraft programme, said astronauts could stay on the celestial object for extended periods of time by the end of this decade.

NASA’s Artemis 1 capsule is en route to the Moon, where it’s expected to break a number of spacefaring records—including one set during Apollo 13.

One thing I learned today is that one of the many SpaceX explosions didn’t have to happen. It turns out that NASA gave SpaceX the option of doing the in-flight abort test via simulation or in reality. The problem with doing it in reality is that SpaceX would likely lose an expensive rocket.

Boeing decided to do their in-flight abort test via simulation for their Starliner capsule. Luckily, SpaceX doesn’t trust simulations and did it for real. I say luckily, because we are overdue to lose more humans in space. So far this century, Virgin Galactic has had 1 death and 1 serious injury, NASA has had 7 deaths, and Soyuz has injured 2 people bad enough to require hospitalization.

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SpaceX’s Dragon Crew Capsule safely blasted away from its carrier Falcon rocket in an test of its abort systems on Jan 19, 2020. The rocket exploded during descent as expected: https://www.space.com/spacex-crew-dragon-launch-abort-test-success.html.

Credit: SpaceX

Join NASA’s Orion spacecraft on its first mission around the Moon using the Artemis Real-time Orbit Website (AROW) to track the spacecraft’s flight as it happens.