Artemis Moon Missions

"We ourselves had the wacky idea for a plasma thruster — a new kind of rocket motor for a satellite," Faley explained. "This is one plasma thruster, and there are 12 of these on the spacecraft, and the business end is these couple little holes here.

"A little pink jet comes out of those and pushes the thing along, and we put 12 of them on the spacecraft. And when you spread them along the length of the craft and give them a little tilt, you can light up pairs of them and you can turn the craft."

Cameras

SLS has a total of eight cameras, with four on the engine section that look upward, two on the intertank looking toward the bottom of the rocket, and two inside the launch vehicle stage adapter to capture the ICPS separation event.

Orion has seven external cameras and five cameras inside the spacecraft

Each of the solar array wings has a wire-less camera near the tip that can be pointed to inspect the exterior of the spacecraft, as well as three cameras mounted on the crew module adapter—two point toward the service module at different angles, and one points upward toward the crew module inside the crew module adapter to capture separation prior to reentry.

Three cameras are mounted inside Orion to capture views from inside and outside the crew module, with one looking out the top docking hatch window, one looking out the front pilot window, and one mounted between the pilot seats looking at where the instrument panel will be located on future missions. Two additional exterior cameras face the forward bay cover.

There are 24 cameras on the rocket and spacecraft – eight on SLS and 16 on Orion – to document essential mission events including liftoff, ascent, solar array deployment, external rocket inspections, landing and recovery, and capture images of Earth and the Moon.

We look back at the Earth from 58,000 miles away