Space travel celebrates milestone success as Orion capsule completes mission

NASA launched Artemis I on November 16 to test the rocket system and heat shield needed to protect humans in exploratory missions to the moon and eventually Mars.

NASA administrator Bill Nelson said: "From the launch of the world's most powerful rocket to the exceptional journey around the Moon and back to Earth, this flight test is a major step forward in the Artemis generation of lunar exploration."

The launch from Florida's Kennedy space centre cost just over $6 million and was delayed several times due to extreme weather.

This uncrewed 25.5 day mission tested pioneering technology designed to protect astronauts from velocity and heat encountered by the launch, journey and re-entry into our atmosphere.

Artemis I travelled more than two million kilometres on the round trip, making the journey the longest distance travelled by a capsule designed to carry human passengers.

The spacecraft smashed another record, travelling around 435,000 kilometres away from earth, beating the record previously made by Apollo 13 in 1970 by 32,000 kilometres.

The Orion capsule's splashdown comes exactly 50 years after Apollo 17's walk on the moon, the date commemorating NASA's last crewed lunar exploration.

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The major focus of the NASA mission centred on testing technologies designed to protect humans against the velocity and temperature of space travel, with Orion's heatshield withstanding re-entry temperatures of 2760 degrees Celsius and moving at speeds above 40,000 kilometres per hour.

Re-entry heat experienced by the Orion capsule was, swelteringly, half the temperature felt on the surface of our sun, NASA said.

The space launch system (SLS) and Orion heatshield have performed as expected allowing plans for the Artemis II launch to move forward, which will swap out Artemis I's high-tech mannequins for human passengers.

Orion's life support systems were intentionally stress-tested against 8.8 million pounds of thrust during launch and by sending the capsule 1000 times further into space than the International Space Station.

NASA associate administrator Jim Free said the project mapped a "path to a regular cadence of missions and a sustained human presence at the moon for scientific discovery and to prepare for human missions to Mars".

NASA intends to repeat Artemis I's journey around the moon using the crewed Artemis II spacecraft in 2024.

That trip is designed to ensure passengers onboard can withstand the extreme pressure and heat of space under protection from the SLS and heat shield technology.

Artemis III is set to launch in 2025 and will see the first racial and gender diverse astronauts walk on the moon's surface and establish a 'gateway' base camp for further space travel.