Overview
- NASA on Friday released the crew’s first Earth photos as Orion passed the halfway mark to the Moon, with controllers reporting normal spacecraft performance.
- The crew left Earth orbit after Thursday’s flawless translunar injection burn, placing Orion on a free-return path that uses lunar gravity to bring them home if needed.
- The next milestone is a close lunar pass early Monday, when the astronauts will fly 4,000–6,000 miles above the far side, take high-resolution images, and begin the return arc to Earth.
- Early hiccups, including a brief loss of two-way communications and a blinking fault light on the capsule’s toilet, were troubleshot and cleared, the crew and NASA said.
- Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen are the first humans to venture beyond low-Earth orbit since 1972, with a Pacific splashdown targeted around April 10–11.