Incredible POV video shows NASA's Orion travelling at 32 times the speed of sound as it enters Earth's atmosphere

A POV video taken from NASA's Orion gives viewers a glimpse into what astronauts see when they return from the moon.

Watch the incredible footage below:

Around this time last year, NASA's Orion spacecraft returned to Earth after successfully completing the Artemis 1 test flight.

During its 25 days in space, a non-crewed Orion orbited the Moon, before reentering the Earth's atmosphere and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on December 11.

To celebrate a year since the successful completion of the mission NASA has released a POV video of the spacecraft plunging back into the Earth's atmosphere at 32 times the speed of sound.

NASA

The successful Artemis 1 mission saw Orion achieve a couple of major firsts in space exploration.

To start, it reached a distance of 434,500 kilometers (270,000 miles) away from Earth, further than any spacecraft designed for humans have ever travelled before.

And, as it returned, Orion became the first spaceship designed for human transportation to attempt a 'skip re-entry,' in which it bounces off the Earth's atmosphere like a stone on a lake.

The maneuver gives the spacecraft more space to travel before landing, allowing it to be more precise.

Chris Madsen, Orion guidance, navigation, and control subsystem manager, explained: "The skip entry will help Orion land closer to the coast of the United States, where recovery crews will be waiting to bring the spacecraft back to land.

"When we fly crew in Orion beginning with Artemis II, landing accuracy will really help make sure we can retrieve the crew quickly and reduces the number of resources we will need to have stationed in the Pacific Ocean to assist in recovery."

NASA

Orion's safe return marks the first successful mission of the Artemis program, a Moon exploration mission led by NASA with the help of six major partner agencies around the world.

"With Orion safely returned to Earth we can begin to see our next mission on the horizon which will fly crew to the Moon for the first time as a part of the next era of exploration,” said Jim Free, NASA associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate.

"This begins our path to a regular cadence of missions and a sustained human presence at the Moon for scientific discovery and to prepare for human missions to Mars."

The program's first manned flight, Artemis 2, will be a lunar flyby and is set to take off as early as November 2024. It will be the first crewed mission to go beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972.