On Monday, NASA’s Orion Spacecraft came within 81 miles of the moon’s surface… the closest approach the uncrewed Artemis I mission will make before moving into a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon. Orion completed the outbound powered flyby at yesterday morning at 6:44, when it passed about 81 miles above the lunar surface at 6:57am on Monday. It then passed about 1,400 miles directly above the Apollo 11 landing site at Tranquility Base at 7:37am, and then flew directly over both the Apollo 14 site and the Apollo 12 landing site. Orion will now travel more than 57,000 miles beyond the Moon at its farthest point from the Moon this Friday, passing the record set by Apollo 14 for the farthest distance traveled by a spacecraft designed for humans at 248,655 miles from Earth on Saturday. Orion will then reach its maximum distance from Earth of 268,552 miles on Monday.