In the early morning hours of November 16, NASA reached a space milestone that will go down in the history of science. It was finally able to complete the launch of the Artemis I mission, the first phase of a total of three to take humans to the Moon, which will have a trajectory of 25 days. But NASA cameras were not the only ones to capture the exact moment the rocket leaves the atmosphere, NOAA satellites have shown images of the epic launch.
The GOES-East weather satellite of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) managed to capture the Artemis I mission as it streaked through the Earth’s atmosphere.
Moments after the launch of Artemis I from pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which occurred at 1:47 EST, the weather satellite detected motion in the Earth’s atmosphere and took up images of the SLS rocket crossing the firmament.
“You can see the rocket going through the atmosphere in this water vapor image,” NOAA said via its official Twitter account, accompanied by a video showing the rocket leaving the atmosphere.
Even though the launch occurred in the middle of the night, NOAA’s GOES-East was able to capture it thanks to its range-viewing water vapor imagery. According to the atmospheric administration itself, this type of imagery is used to track mid-tropospheric winds. In other words, they are designed to identify jet streams that help meteorologists forecast the path of hurricanes, and the movement of mid-latitude storms and monitor the potential for severe weather. They also serve to estimate mid-level humidity and identify regions where turbulence may exist.
The first image of the Earth from Orion
In addition to the satellite images from the launch of Artemis I, the Orion capsule itself, which carries with it a series of installed cameras, has already provided the first views of the Earth from its perspective. They show part of the capsule’s solar panels and, in the background, our planet with its curvature.
NASA released the images in a live broadcast a few hours after Artemis I’s successful launch. New images of the Earth and the Orion capsule’s journey are expected to be released by the space agency on its trip to the Moon.
All images captured will be used to evaluate the spacecraft’s performance and thus secure the human crew that will accompany the spacecraft on the next phase of the mission. Artemis II will make the same journey as its predecessor, but this time with a human crew that will later land on the Earth’s natural satellite.
Story originally published in Spanish in Ecoosfera