Returning from a rotation around the Moon, the Orion spacecraft landed on Sunday December 11 off the Mexican island of Guadalupe. For this first mission, the space capsule carried no passengers but, in the long term, it should make it possible to mark the return of humans to the lunar surface. Orion does not come home empty-handed, however, and has enabled NASA to take some impressive shots. Images that could never have existed as his departure was complicated.
After multiple aborted take-off attempts, the SLS (Space Launch System), the most powerful rocket ever built by NASA, finally soared into the skies on November 16. Since the end of the summer, the start of the Artemis 1 mission, the first step towards a return of human beings to lunar soil, had been postponed several times, suffering technical problems and tropical storms. The SLS eventually propelled Orion on a trajectory that took it 430,000 km from Earth, behind the Moon, before returning by making two passes close to our satellite.