On flight day 11, NASA'S Orion spacecraft captured imagery looking back at the Earth from a camera mounted on one of its solar arrays.
Image: NASAThe Orion spacecraft has now surpassed the record set in 1970 by the crew on Apollo 13's aborted mission to land on the Moon.
On Saturday, Orion was on the eleventh day of the Artemis I mission and had entered a distant retrograde orbit where it will remain for six days before its journey back to Earth, with a planned splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday, December 11.
Artemis I is a practice run for the crewed Artemis II mission.
According to NASA, over the weekend Orion surpassed the distance record for a mission with a spacecraft designed to carry humans to deep space and back to Earth. The record was set during the Apollo 13 mission at 248,655 miles from Earth.
"At its maximum distance from the Moon, Orion will be more than 270,000 miles from Earth Monday, Nov. 28," NASA said in an update.
Apollo 13 was meant to be NASA's third lunar landing but the mission was aborted after an explosion and loss of three fuel cells on the third day of the journey. The explosion of the service module caused swarm of debris that made it impossible to sight real stars for navigation and the spacecraft's temperature had dropped to 38 degrees Fahrenheit (3,33