Astronauts set distance record, revealing the Moon as a place to be explored - Ars Technica

Overview

Astronauts set distance record, revealing the Moon as a place to be explored

“Humans have probably not evolved to see what we’re seeing. It is truly hard to describe. It is amazing.”

Details

After staring at the Moon for almost eight hours Monday, the commander of NASA’s Artemis II mission finally ran out of ways to describe what he was seeing.

“No matter how long we look at this, our brains are not processing this image in front of us. It is absolutely spectacular, surreal,” said Reid Wiseman, the 50-year-old Navy test pilot leading the four-person crew circumnavigating the Moon. “There are no adjectives. I’m going need to invent some new ones to describe what we’re looking at outside this window.”

Live images from the Orion spacecraft showed the Moon growing larger Monday. Video from Go Pro cameras outside the capsule streamed down in low-resolution format, due to limitations on bandwidth coming back from deep space, but the Artemis II astronauts were expected to downlink sharper telephoto snapshots overnight Monday into Tuesday morning.

In three years of training, Wiseman and his crewmates—Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen—learned how to pilot and operate their Orion Moon ship, named Integrity. The astronauts trained for emergencies and prepared themselves to accept the risk of flying the first crew mission on NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule. Artemis II is the first human mission to the vicinity of the Moon in more than 53 years, so NASA put the astronauts through geology and photography courses to document their observations of the lunar surface.

The preparation is paying off. The Orion spacecraft has performed well since its launch last week, and the crew looped behind the Moon on Monday, reaching their closest point to the lunar surface at a distance of 4,067 miles (6,545 kilometers) at 7 pm EDT (23:00 UTC). Two minutes later, Artemis II arrived at the mission’s most distant point from Earth at a range of 252,756 miles (406,771 kilometers), setting a new record for the farthest anyone has traveled into space.

Those milestones occurred as the spacecraft flew behind the Moon, as seen from Earth, with no way for mission controllers in Houston to contact the astronauts inside Integrity. After about 40 minutes without radio contact, Artemis II reemerged from behind the Moon and restored communications with engineers in Houston.

A Go Pro camera on one of the Orion spacecraft’s solar array wings captured this fuzzy view of the Moon and Earth during Monday’s lunar flyby. Better views are on the way.

Before this point in the lunar flyby, the four astronauts periodically radioed their impressions of the Moon’s deep craters, mountain peaks, volcanic markings. At the same time, they took photos and logged their observations on tablets carried inside the spacecraft. Their snappy language reflected a familiarity with lunar geology. All four astronauts, none of whom were trained geologists before Artemis II, spent time in classrooms and traveled on geology field trips to learn about the Moon ahead of their launch.

Then, the lights went out. The Sun disappeared behind the Moon, revealing a scene that defied description. Silhouetted against the Sun, the Moon was bathed only in “Earthshine”—the faint, hued sunlight reflected off the continents, oceans, clouds, and ice caps that make up the Earth a quarter-million miles away.

From the viewpoint of Integrity, the Moon eclipsed the Sun for nearly an hour. The alignment was pure luck based on the mission’s trajectory following its launch April 1. Artemis II could have flown a slightly different path around the Moon based on when it launched, and most of the trajectories would not have allowed for an eclipse. With an April 1 launch, the eclipse became the cherry on top of the Moon sundae.

Glover, the pilot on Artemis II, told mission control the astronauts had trouble taking photos that did the view justice.

“What we’re seeing, we’re just not picking up on the cameras,” Glover said. “After all the amazing sights that we saw earlier, we just went sci-fi. It just looks unreal. You can see the surface of the Moon [from] the Earthshine. You can actually see a majority of the Moon. It is the strangest looking thing.”

About 30 minutes later, Glover added: “I’m really glad we launched on April 1 because humans have probably not evolved to see what we’re seeing. It is truly hard to describe. It is amazing.”

Eclipse chasers on Earth know that the Moon’s passage in front of the Sun offers a rare opportunity to see the solar corona, the Sun’s outer atmosphere. The super-heated corona extends millions of miles into space. For the Artemis II astronauts, the corona created a halo-like effect around the perimeter of the Moon.

“It’s glowing behind the entire Moon,” Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen said. “I thought it would look dark against the black sky or deep space, but the Sun is lighting up the entire limb of the Moon. You can see the entire perimeter of it … You can still make out little bits of topography around the entire limb. Just bumps as you go around it.”

Glover, 49, continued with his narration, identifying stars and planets not easily visible when the spacecraft is illuminated in sunlight.

“That was an absolutely spectacular, magnificent experience,” Wiseman said after the end of the eclipse. “Houston, if you could give me about 20 new superlatives in the mission summary for tomorrow, that would help my vocabulary out a bit.”

The cosmic eclipse capped a remarkable day at the Moon that began with a wakeup call recorded by former astronaut Jim Lovell before his death last year. Lovell flew around the Moon twice, first on Apollo 8 in 1968, the first crew mission to see the Moon up close. He was later the commander of Apollo 13, which set the previous human spaceflight distance record in 1970. Apollo 13 zoomed around the Moon after famously aborting its lunar landing mission.

“Welcome to my old neighborhood!” Lovell said in the prerecorded message. “When Frank Borman, Bill Anders, and I orbited the Moon on Apollo 8, we got humanity’s first up-close look at the Moon and got a view of the home planet that inspired and united people around the world. I’m proud to pass that torch on to you—as you swing around the Moon and lay the groundwork for missions to Mars … for the benefit of all. It’s a historic day, and I know how busy you’ll be. But don’t forget to enjoy the view. So, Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy, and all the great teams supporting you–good luck and Godspeed from all of us here on the good Earth.”

A short time later, Artemis II passed Lovell’s Apollo 13 record. Jenni Gibbons, an astronaut in mission control, marked the moment with a radio call to the Orion spacecraft. Hansen responded with the crew’s request to name two craters on the Moon, one for their Integrity spaceship and the other for Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll, who died of cancer in 2020.

“There’s a feature in a really neat place on the Moon , and it is on the near side-far side boundary. In fact, it’s just on the near side of that boundary. So at certain times of the Moon’s transit around Earth, we will be able to see this from Earth,” Hansen said of Carroll Crater. “It’s a bright spot on the Moon. We would like to call it Carroll.”

It was an emotional moment for the crew, and for many watching the mission from the ground. After sharing an embrace and wiping away tears, the astronauts settled into their lunar observations. A camera inside the Orion crew cabin recorded the commemoration, seen below.

From an Earthbound perspective, Artemis II approached the Moon from the side, with parts of both faces of the lunar surface visible to the crew. As the spacecraft got closer, it traveled toward the far side, giving the astronauts a view of lunar terrain never before seen by human eyes in daylight. The far side of the Moon was about 20 percent illuminated for Monday’s flyby.

Before Artemis II, only robotic missions had imaged large swaths of the far side, including the full width Mare Orientale, an ancient impact basin stretching nearly 600 miles in diameter. Artemis II got a long glimpse. The astronauts described the three concentric rings, essentially circular mountain ranges, emanating from Mare Orientale’s lava-filled center. To the naked eye, the rings looked as if they were dusted with chalk or snow, Glover said.

Glover then narrated his view of the terminator, the boundary between night and day on the Moon. “It is the most rugged that I’ve seen it from a lighting perspective,” he said. “There are islands of terrain out there that are completely surrounded by darkness, which indicates some real variation in terrain. Up to the north, there is a very nice double crater. It looks like a snowman sitting there 5 or 10 degrees below the pole, along the terminator.”

Of course, scientists have known for decades what Mare Orientale and the rest of the Moon’s far side look like, thanks to a series of robotic missions. Those precursor missions, including the still-operating Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), have more instruments in their scientific toolkits than Artemis II.

But the crew’s observations do have some value. Artemis II flew much farther from the Moon than LRO, providing a wider field-of-view for the astronauts and their handheld Nikon cameras. From more than 4,000 miles away, the crew’s Nikons were expected to capture images with resolution comparable to LRO’s wide-angle color camera more than 100 times closer to the surface. Just as important, the Artemis II flyby gave astronauts a chance to offer a human perspective that robots can’t provide. The real-time observation and feedback loop between the crew and mission control served as a practice run for future landing missions.

This visualization of Artemis II’s trajectory shows the spacecraft’s predicted location Wednesday, April 8, after the lunar flyby.

NASA/Kel Elkins (Science and Technology Corporation) Ernie Wright (USRA)

From his perch a few thousand miles away, Glover imagined himself walking on the Moon. “I was walking around there on the surface, climbing, and off-roading in amazing terrain,” he said.

Gibbons, back on Earth, wished the crew well as they arced behind the Moon shortly after 6:30 pm EDT (21:30 UTC): “From all of us, it’s a privilege to witness you carrying the fire past our farthest reach. Thank you. Godspeed.”

In his final radio transmission before lunar occultation, Glover harkened to the reading from the book of Genesis by the Apollo 8 crew as they circled the Moon in 1968.

“As we get close to the nearest point to the Moon and the farthest point from Earth, as we continue to unlock the mysteries of the cosmos, I would like to remind you of one of the most important mysteries there on Earth, and that’s love,” Glover said. “Christ said, in response to what was the greatest command, that it was to love God with all that you are. And he also, being a great teacher, said … to love your neighbor as yourself. So as we prepare to go out of radio communication, we’re still able to feel your love from Earth, and to all of you down there on Earth and around Earth, we love you from the Moon.”

You can watch a replay of Glover’s message in the video embedded below.

Out of view, Artemis II soared to the apogee, or farthest point, in its flight path, and Earth’s gravity began pulling the Orion spacecraft back home. The mission is tracking along a free return trajectory, meaning the gravitational influences of the Earth and the Moon are steering the capsule toward atmospheric reentry without needing any major rocket burns. A few more course correction maneuvers are planned in the coming days to fine-tune the trajectory.

The crew’s encounter with the Moon concluded with a long-distance call from President Donald Trump on Monday night.

The Trump administration, despite proposing cuts to NASA’s budget, is pushing the agency to land humans on the Moon by the end of 2028, when Trump’s term in the White House comes to a close and before China’s lunar program can deliver its own crew to the surface.

The timeline is aggressive, and may not be achievable, but NASA has more Artemis missions in the pipeline. After a recent revamp of the Artemis program, NASA now plans to launch the Artemis III mission as soon as next year on a flight in low-Earth orbit to dock with at least one of the two human-rated lunar landers under development by Space X and Blue Origin. Artemis IV will follow with a lunar landing attempt, assuming everything goes as planned.

Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, NASA mission specialist Christina Koch, commander Reid Wiseman, and pilot Victor Glover after arriving at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, for Artemis II launch preparations.

The longer-term strategy calls for additional crew and robotic landers to deliver equipment to build a base near the Moon’s south pole, somewhat comparable to the international research facilities in Antarctica.

Koch, a spacecraft engineer and Antarctic explorer before joining NASA’s astronaut corps, told reporters before the launch of Artemis II that she hoped this mission would be “the start of an era where everyone, every person on Earth, can look at the Moon and think of it as also a destination.”

She echoed those thoughts in a remarks from the Moon on Monday.

“The truth is the Moon really is its own unique body in the Universe,” Koch said. “It’s not just a poster in the sky that goes by. It is a real place, and when we have that perspective and we compare it to our home on the Earth, it just reminds us how much we have in common.”

         NASA's Moon ship and rocket seem to be working well, so what about the landers?

         Why will today's lunar flyby only beam back low-resolution video?

         “The problem is Sam Altman”: Open AI Insiders don’t trust CEO

         Teardown of unreleased LG Rollable shows why rollable phones aren't a thing

         "Cognitive surrender" leads AI users to abandon logical thinking, research finds

Ars Technica has been separating the signal from the noise for over 25 years. With our unique combination of technical savvy and wide-ranging interest in the technological arts and sciences, Ars is the trusted source in a sea of information. After all, you don’t need to know everything, only what’s important.

Key Takeaways

Astronauts set distance record, revealing the Moon as a place to be explored
“Humans have probably not evolved to see what we’re seeing
After staring at the Moon for almost eight hours Monday, the commander of NASA’s Artemis II mission finally ran out of ways to describe what he was seeing
“No matter how long we look at this, our brains are not processing this image in front of us
Live images from the Orion spacecraft showed the Moon growing larger Monday