Carrying the torch from Apollo, through shuttle and station, to a hoped-for new era of space exploration, the Artemis 2 lunar flyby exceeded expectations
I monitored the NASA mission coverage livestream all last week. As the crew approached the Moon (Luna), it waned from gibbous to half to crescent within hours. Earth appeared to set and then rise. And then the Moon eclipsed the sun, and commander Reid Weisman declared, “We have not evolved to see such a sight”. Up until then, the crew photographs had done justice to their sights, but no longer.
Responding to the astronauts waxing poetic and ecstatic, one capsule communicator, channelling Project Hail Mary‘s fictional Rocky, replied, “Amaze, amaze, amaze,” while another cap com replied, “Copy, moon joy.”
The crew travelled farther from Earth than any other humans, over a quarter million miles, about 1.3 light-seconds, and pilot Victor Glover advised, “Let’s actually savor the com delay we have.”
NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya remarked, “The [crew’s] expressions of love and devotion to family … is a great example of why we go and do these missions. If you can’t take love to the stars, then what are we doing? … why do we even go? That’s why we send humans instead of robots, [for] that firsthand witness. They’ll go through a whole range of emotions, like we who are watching them, and that’s the whole point: that we can share that experience.”
Earth outside the window of the Artemis 2 Orion crew capsule “Integrity”.
Earth appears to set as the Artemis 2 crew moves behind the Moon. The lunar surface is comparatively dark and Earth is so bright it was difficult to look at.
Sun eclipsed by the Moon (right) as seen by Artemis 2 (left) from a camera at the end of one of its solar arrays. The Moon is partially lit by Earthshine (from the upper left) with Venus (upper left, nearly eclipsed by the spacecraft) and Saturn and Mars (lower right) amidst stars of the constellation Pisces.
Broadcast live, ESA’s service module (left) separates from NASA’s command module (right) with the crew shortly before Artemis 2’s atmospheric reentry, again recorded from a solar array end.