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It took the Orion spacecraft weeks to travel around the moon and then come back home. It launched last month and returned for an ocean splashdown on Sunday. In case you missed the whole thing, or if you just want to relive the glamour of lunar spaceflight, you can experience the entire Artemis I journey in a brisk minute-long video from the European Space Agency.
The footage starts with the blazing liftoff of the massive Space Launch System rocket and ends with Orion's gentle parachute landing in the Pacific. In between you'll see glorious moon, Earth and space views, all set to rousing music.
Artemis I has kicked off a new era of moon exploration. The uncrewed mission was designed to show the Orion spacecraft is ready to carry astronauts out into space in preparation for a future human moon landing. ESA played a big role in the mission by building the European Service Module to provide power and propulsion to Orion.
The video doesn't try to do justice to the complexity and timing of the mission. It's a greatest-hits collection of important and beautiful moments, an elevator pitch for Artemis. One of the mission's mottos has been "We are going." Now NASA can say, "We went. And we are going back again."
