by Editor’s note: This story was updated on Nov. 18 after the event was moved due to bad weather at the telescope site.
NASA’s Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft is headed for the moon on a first test flight of its kind, and you may be able to see a telescope of the spacecraft online Saturday evening (Nov. 19).
The Orion spacecraft launched to the moon from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:47 a.m. EST (0647 GMT) Wednesday (Nov. 16), carrying the agency’s first Space Launch System mega rocket into orbit. A few hours later, the rocket’s upper stage fired its engine to send the Artemis 1 Orion capsule on its journey around the moon. That’s where tonight’s live webcast comes in.
Astrophysicist Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project in Ceccano, Italy, will attempt to stream live telescope images of Orion online in a live streaming event scheduled for 10:30 PM EST (0330 Nov 20 GMT). You can view it for free in the window above or directly from the Virtual Telescope Project website (opens in new tab).
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“The launch of Artemis 1 is much more than going back to the moon. It is the beginning of a new era,” Masi wrote in a statement. “Due to the historical importance of this event, we decided to try something that (to our knowledge) has never been done before: we will share live footage online of the Orion spacecraft on its way to the moon after launch.”
It’s not certain that the Virtual Telescope Project will be able to spot the Orion spacecraft. First the weather in Italy must cooperate, then Masi must be able to see the spacecraft, a relatively small, fast-moving target in the emptiness of space, with his telescope.
“We will do our best to show you the Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft heading for the moon as soon as it will be visible from Italy,” Masi wrote. “We assume that the launch and orbit data from the JPL Horizons/Solar System Dynamics services have been properly imported into our robotic telescopes to best track this extremely demanding target.”
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