NASA has shared new photos of the incredible moment the Orion space capsule returned to Earth after flying around the moon. The unmanned Orion capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, west of Baja California, at 09:40 PST (17:40 GMT) on Sunday. Since its launch in mid-November, it has travelled more than 1.4 million miles on a path around the moon and back to Earth. The images show before and after the historic point of impact, which marks the first part of Artemis – NASA's successor to the Apollo programme in the 1960s and 1970s. NASA's Orion Capsule descends toward splash down after a successful uncrewed Artemis 1 Moon Mission on December 11, 2022 seen from aboard the USS Portland in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California, Mexico Artemis 1 is NASA's uncrewed flight test of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft, which launched on November 16 from Kennedy Space Center, Merritt Island, Florida.

NASA's Artemis programme is already breaking records, less than two weeks after its very first spaceflight launched. The agency has confirmed its Artemis 1 Orion capsule smashed the record for the furthest distance travelled from Earth by any craft designed to carry humans. At 08:40 EST (13:40 GMT) on Saturday (November 26), Orion reached 248,655 miles from Earth, beating the record set by Apollo 13 in April 1970. Then, at 16:06 EST (21:06 GMT) on Saturday, it reached the farthest point in its orbit – a maximum distance of 268,553 miles. Artemis 1 is an uncrewed test flight for NASA's Artemis programme, comprising the Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

As soon as I saw these new artificial intelligence image creation tools, like DALL-E, I wanted to see how well they'd work for generating space and astronomy images. I'm still on the waiting list for DALL-E 2, so I don't have any feedback to give there, but I signed up for Midjourney AI, played around with the free account, and then signed up for a full paid account, so I could test out its capabilities. How well does it work? I'm still learning to craft prompts to get the best results, but the biggest issue is that they're unscientific. If I need a picture of the Space Launch System, it needs to be the actual Space Launch System and not some kind of art deco version of a rocket that looks like it was designed in the 1950s.

Incredible footage released by NASA has revealed the space agency's attempts to push its Orion spacecraft's engines to their limits, ahead of a planned 2024 manned mission to the moon dubbed Artemis. In the latest of an on-going series of tests, engineers conducted a continuous 12-minute firing of Orion's propulsion system. Orion is a capsule designed to carry humans to the moon and bring them back safely and the test simulated an abort-to-orbit scenario, in which the second stage of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket fails. Maggot leaps itself into the air'to catapult to safety' Samsung unveils Galaxy Note10's S Pen that offers greater control Huawei unveils its new'Harmony' phone operating system'Choose truth over facts!' Biden flubs line in Iowa speech Incredible footage released by NASA has revealed the space agency's attempts to push its Orion spacecraft's engines to their limits (pictured), ahead of a planned 2024 manned mission to the moon dubbed Artemis Under ideal conditions the SLS rocket would blast the Orion spacecraft - which will carry astronauts and their supplies - into orbit around the moon. Part of this process involves the interim cryogenic propulsion stage (ICPS) firing, blasting the Orion capsule away from the rocket behind it.

NASA has released a jaw-dropping video of the moment its deluge system dumps thousands of gallons of water onto Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center. The space agency is prepping for the maiden voyage of the $8.9 billion Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which will require roughly 450,000 gallons of water during ignition and liftoff to counteract the extreme heat and acoustics. In the incredible footage from this month's wet flow test, a torrential stream of water can be seen spewing straight up into the air and washing over the complex before dwindling to a trickle in just a matter of seconds. The latest wet flow test, shown in the footage above, was conducted on October 15 at the Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39B. The SLS rocket will lift off with 8.4 million pounds of thrust, thanks to its four RS-25 engines and two solid rocket boosters.