The crew of Orion headed towards Earth after observing the Moon for hours
- The four astronauts set a distance record from the blue planet, discovering regions of the moon’s far side never seen before.
- They are now expected off the coast of California on Friday.
In just a few hours, they discovered unknown lunar craters, witnessed a sunrise and moonrise from close quarters, and even saw a solar eclipse. The four astronauts of Artemis II resumed the journey back to Earth this Tuesday after a memorable flyby of the Moon. Not only did the crew achieve the first flight around the Moon since 1972, they also went further into space than any human before, over 406,000 km from Earth.
“We will return,” said Christina Koch, an experienced explorer who enters the history books as the first woman to fly around the Moon. “We will be a source of inspiration, but we will always choose Earth.” She shared the flight with her American colleagues Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover, as well as Canadian Jeremy Hansen. Glued to the windows for nearly seven hours, they had a unique perspective to observe the Moon, higher (6,500 km) than the more constrained view of their Apollo predecessors by about a hundred kilometers.
An “incredible” spectacle observed in orbit
Marveling at lunar landscapes, they described countless details of craters, as well as the brown and greenish shadows on the lunar surface. “We see a very beautiful double crater. It looks like a snowman,” described pilot Victor Glover, becoming the first black astronaut to participate in a lunar mission. “It’s really hard to describe. It’s incredible.”
The astronauts observed regions of the far side that “had never been illuminated during the Apollo missions,” said Jenni Gibbons, the Canadian astronaut who had been handling all communication with the crew from the NASA control room in Houston at the end of this historic day. “Some of the features Artemis II observed and described today, no human eye had ever seen before,” she explained. “It is the first time that the most sensitive cameras in the world, namely human eyes, have been able to observe them.”
During the flyby, the astronauts passed behind the Moon for 40 minutes, cutting off communications. They witnessed a spectacle observed only by a few humans in history: a sunrise and moonrise. The eclipse where the Moon blocked the Sun, described as “science-fiction” by Victor Glover. They aimed to capture the sunrise, much like their Apollo 8 predecessors did in 1968, the first to orbit the Moon.
The crew hopes that “this record will be short-lived”
The live transmission of the flyby in very high definition on platforms like Netflix and YouTube, thanks to GoPro cameras installed outside the spacecraft, stressed the significance of the day’s learning. “I cannot overstate the magnitude of what we have learned today,” said Kelsey Young, the mission’s scientific manager.
The distance record from Earth is only 6,000 km, compared to Apollo 13’s crew in 1970, but it was embraced by NASA and President Trump as evidence of the rejuvenation of the American space program, with the president even promising Mars one day. He warmly congratulated the astronauts, saying, “Today you have entered history and made all of America very proud, incredibly proud.”
“We choose this moment to challenge our generation and the next to ensure that this record is short-lived,” declared Jeremy Hansen shortly after the record. The crew also made a special request: to name two lunar craters, one in honor of their spacecraft called “Integrity,” and the other for Carroll Taylor Wiseman, the commander’s devoted wife. The request brought tears to the group.
They will return off the coast of California on Friday, where their Orion capsule will splashdown, slowed by parachutes. If this mission and the next one, next year, go well, the American space agency plans to land astronauts on the Moon in 2028.
