A little bit of this, a little bit of that.

A little bit on Artemis 2...

NASA's Artemis 2 Orion spacecraft successfully performed its translunar injection burn, or TLI, in a 5 minute, 55 second maneuver that sent the probe beyond Earth orbit -- the first time astronauts have done so since Apollo 17 in 1972.

The burn began on time at 7:49 p.m. EDT (2349 GMT), 1 day, 1 hour and 14 minutes into the mission.

"Integrity, looks like a good burn," Mission Control Capcom Chris Birch radioed to the crew.

The Orion spacecraft stack came within 115 miles of the Earth's surface, which must have been near it's perigee. The source says they raised their perigee twice today but didn't say exactly what it was. The TLI burn will push the spacecraft into a free return path that will loop around the moon and get flung back toward Earth by the Moon's gravity. That far point is being described as the farthest from Earth humans have ever been, and will allow them to see the entire lunar farside in one view, rather than the close approaches of the Apollo era. 

A little bit on comet MAPS heading into it's closest approach to the sun.

Comet MAPS is now visible in the latest photo from SOHO's LASCO C3 camera, timed (as printed in the lower left hand corner) at 2306 UTC or 7:03PM EDT. MAPS is small and easy to miss, so I put a red circle around it.

If you compare this image to the one posted Tuesday, it's about midway between the first two points on the lower line of the predicted path - the approach to the sun - marked Apr. 2 12h UT (2PM EDT) and Apr. 3 9H UT (5AM EDT). In other words right where you'd expect it to be within an hour or so.

Tomorrow ought to be interesting to watch the Lasco camera. The position prediction plot from Tuesday shows the comet moves from that 5AM tomorrow morning position just mentioned almost to the point where the large (dark blue) blocking circle covers it.