Spot NASA’s Artemis 1 Orion on way to the moon tonight (Nov. 16)

NASA’s Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft is headed to the moon on a first-of-its-kind test flight and you may be able to see a telescope’s view of the spacecraft online tonight (Nov. 16). 

The Orion spacecraft launched toward the moon today at 1:47 a.m. EST (0647 GMT) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, riding the agency’s first Space Launch System megarocket into orbit. A few hours later, the rocket’s upper stage fired its engine to send the Artemis 1 Orion capsule on its trip 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 views of Orion online in a livestream event scheduled for 10:30 p.m. EST (0330 Nov. 17 GMT). You can watch it 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 us going to the moon again. It is the beginning of a new era,” Masi wrote in a statement. “Because of the historic importance of this event, we decided to try something never done (to our knowledge) before: we will share live images, online, of the Orion spacecraft on its way to the moon after its launch.”