Kestrel Orbital · Flight K-1 · first crew
Apogee
Four crew, eight days, one loop around the far side of the Moon and home. This page is the flight: scroll, and every readout below flies with you.
Flight K-1LiveCrew of 48 days
Eight minutes, then the ground lets go.
Main engine cutoff at 185 km. Below the crew, the night side of Earth: cities scattered like embers, a thin green ribbon of airglow, and dawn creeping over the curve.
- Altitude
- 185 km
- Velocity
- 7.79 km/s
- One lap
- 88 min
One burn, and Earth starts to shrink.
Six minutes on the upper stage sent the capsule toward the Moon. Now the crew coast for three days, and the planet they left already fits behind an outstretched hand.
- Injection burn
- 6 min 12 s
- Coast
- 3 days
- Crew
- 4
The Moon, close enough to count the craters.
At 130 km over the far side, the crew look down on ground no one has seen with their own eyes. Then the radio goes quiet for 41 minutes.
- Closest
- 130 km
- Radio silence
- 41 min
- Night side
- −173°C
Looking back, the whole sky.
With Earth and the Sun hidden behind the Moon, the sky is darker than anywhere on the ground. Every smudge is a galaxy. Earth rises over the lunar edge again in nine minutes.