The Orion capsule on Monday, moved 430,000km beyond the Earth - the furthest any spacecraft designed to carry humans has travelled.

Just before reaching the record distance, it captured the Moon moving in front of the Earth.

Orion is flying in a distant retrograde lunar orbit, meaning it is far from the moon and orbiting opposite to the moon's path around the Earth.

The spacecraft is unmanned on this occasion, but if it completes the current flight without incident, astronauts will be on the next outing in two years' time.

NASA is streaming incredible video views from Artemis 1, courtesy of the Orion spacecraft.

Nasa is planning a series of ever more complex missions with Orion.

They're part of the agency's Artemis programme, which seeks to return people to the lunar surface after a gap of 50 years.

Monday's milestone marks the middle point of the mission.

The Esa module delivered two key engine burns last week to get Orion into a big loop around the Moon known as a Distant Retrograde Orbit.

It's called "distant" because the path takes Orion a long way from the Moon's surface (61,000km; 38,000 miles) and "retrograde" because it sends the capsule in the opposite direction to the lunar body's direction of travel.

It will require two further manoeuvres in the coming days to put the capsule on the correct trajectory to come home.

The spacecraft is due to splash down in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego in California on 11 December.
-Space/BBC