Blown away! Watch NASA's Artemis 1 Launch Abort System blast off into space (video) - Space.com

NASA's Orion spacecraft transforms into a glowing, pink palace as the launch escape tower zooms into the black.

NASA's Orion spacecraft cockpit shines in pink from the glow of its Launch Abort System (LAS) tower, ripping away from the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and spacecraft stack.

This all happened as planned during the epic launch of the Artemis 1 mission to the moon Nov.

Lockheed Martin, which built the Orion spacecraft, shared the cockpit view on Twitter (opens in new tab) on Friday (Dec. 1), anticipating what astronauts will see with their own eyes starting with Artemis 2's expected journey around the moon in 2024.

In photos: Artemis 1 launch: Amazing views of NASA's moon rocket debut .

If the launch brings the crew to space without incident, however, the LAS tower tears away into space to reduce the mass of the capsule before its trip to the moon.

Epic video from throughout Artemis 1 has kept the public riding along with the spacecraft around the moon and towards Earth again, bringing amazing live views of the lunar surface and our distant planet that left NASA engineers "giddy" with joy. .

Most space systems with humans on board have been fitted with ejection seats or launch abort towers through crewed history, with the exception of latter missions of the space shuttle that instead had mission abort options with the crew remaining inside the vehicle.

 —  10 strange things NASA's Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft took to the moon.

Russian space journalist Anatoly Zak says the system saved the lives of the launching crew as it pulled them away (opens in new tab) from an exploding rocket still on the launch pad. .

11, 2018 during Soyuz mission MS-10 to the International Space Station did not use the escape tower, as that had been already jettisoned, but the crew used an alternate abort mode to make it back to ground swiftly and safely.