Flight Day 17: A Sliver of Home

art001e001924 (Dec. 2, 2022) On flight day 17 of the Artemis I mission, Orion’s optical navigation camera captured this black-and-white image of our Earth as the spacecraft sets its sights on a Dec. 11 splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Orion uses the optical navigation camera to capture imagery of the Earth and the Moon at different phases and distances, providing an enhanced body of data to certify its effectiveness under different lighting conditions as a way to help orient the spacecraft on future missions with crew.