The moon is incredibly hot, and also incredibly cold.

There's radiation. A thin atmosphere. No air to breathe.

If NASA ever establishes a lunar base—a long-term project advanced Wednesday with the launch of Artemis I—it will have to confront these challenges to human habitation.

It'll also have to figure out the dust.

Lunar dust is made of gnarly little particles—jagged and sharp-edged grains that add up to a major problem for astronauts and just about any human-made object that's supposed to land or take off from the moon.

For years, NASA scientists have studied just how much damage that dust, along with lunar gravel and rocks, could cause, particularly when it gets kicked up by rocket engines and starts jetting about at speeds faster than a bullet.

"This is not just fluffy dust that's going to put a little coat on your … hardware," said Philip Metzger, planetary scientist at University of Central Florida who has researched the effects of interplanetary dust since 1997. "This is sandblasting, damaging; it's rocks at high velocity, sand grains, high-velocity gravel."

One of the foremost institutions studying lunar dust and its potential effect on human missions is the Swamp Works, a NASA research lab co-founded in 2013 by Metzger, who is now retired from the agency but still collaborates on some projects.

The Artemis I mission brought Orion on its closest approach to the moon while blasting out on its way to an orbit that will take it farther from the Earth than any previous human-rated spacecraft.

Orion entered the moon's gravitational influence on Sunday and used that power along with a thruster on an outbound powered burn to come within 81 miles from the lunar surface. It will over the next week get as far as about 40,000 miles away from the moon.

That would bring it about 268.000 miles away from Earth surpassing the distance away from Earth traveled by Apollo 13 by about 30,000 miles.

"This is one of those days you've been thinking about and dreaming about for a long, long time," said NASA flight director Zeb Scoville. "This morning we just saw the Earth set behind the moon as we take the next human-rated vehicle around the moon preparing to bring humans back there within a few years. This is a game changer."

Orion launched from Kennedy Space Center on Nov. 16 atop the Space Launch System becoming the most powerful rocket to successfully launch from Earth into space with its 8.8 million pounds of thrust.

While millions of Americans plan for the upcoming holidays, a variety of critical research and supplies will head to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of SpaceX's 26th Commercial Resupply Services mission (SpaceX CRS-26). The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is scheduled for launch onboard a Falcon 9 rocket to the space station no earlier than November 22, 2022, from Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Among the investigations launching on this mission are several ISS National Laboratory-sponsored projects intending to bring value to our nation through space-based research and technology development, while enabling commerce in low Earth orbit.

Here is a quick look at some of these payloads:

• RevBio (formerly LaunchPad Medical), a clinical-stage medical device company, will further evaluate the company's proprietary bone adhesive, Tetranite, which can speed up new bone growth while reducing recovery time and discomfort in patients with a bone fracture.