The crew of the Artemis II mission flew around the Moon

Four astronauts on NASA's Artemis II mission on Monday flew deeper into space than anyone before them, flying past the shadowed far side of the Moon, revealing a glimpse of the lunar surface being exposed to space bombing.

The six-hour exploration of the usually hidden hemisphere of Earth's only natural satellite was marked by the astronauts' direct visual observations of the «impact flashes» of meteors falling on the darkened and heavily the lunar surface pitted with craters, writes xrust.

About two dozen scientists gathered in a conference room adjacent to mission control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston to capture in real time lunar phenomena observed by the crew of the Artemis mission as their Orion spacecraft, roughly the size of an SUV, circled the moon. about a quarter of a million miles (402,000 km) from Earth.

The six-hour flyby, which brought the craft to within 4,070 miles of the lunar surface, came six days after the spaceflight began, marking the first time astronauts have visited the moon since NASA's Cold War-era Apollo missions more than half a century ago.

Between 1969 and 1972, six of these missions landed two-person crews on the Moon—the only 12 people ever to set foot on its surface.

The Artemis program, the successor to the Apollo program, aims to repeat this achievement by 2028, ahead of China's first moon landing, and establish a long-term US presence on the Moon over the next decade, including a lunar base that will serve as a testing ground for potential future missions to Mars.

Although the Artemis II mission was intended to be a crewed dress rehearsal for future lunar missions, it provided scientists with a wealth of new material to study, including flashes from meteorite impacts recorded during Monday's flyby that resembled the sparks and streaks of light described by some Apollo astronauts.

The Artemis II mission crew, aboard the Orion capsule since launch from Florida last week, began their sixth day in space, waking up Monday to a pre-recorded message from the late NASA astronaut Jim Lovell, who served on the lunar missions. Apollo 8 and Apollo 13.

“Welcome to my old neighborhood,” said Lovell, who died last year at age 97. «This is a historic day and I know how busy you will be, but don't forget to enjoy the view… good luck and all the best.»

Hours later, the crew of American astronauts Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen made space flight history by traveling a distance greater than any previous human achievement—252,756 miles.

The previous record of approximately 248,000 miles was set in 1970 by the crew of Apollo 13 after a near-catastrophic malfunction of the spacecraft aborted the mission, forcing Lovell and his two crewmates to use gravity Moons to return safely to Earth.

New craters

During the flight, the Artemis crew spent some time assigning preliminary new names to lunar objects that previously had no official designations.

In a radio message to Mission Control in Houston, Hansen proposed naming one crater Integrity after the Orion capsule carrying the crew, and another crater, sometimes visible from Earth at the boundary between the far and near sides of the Moon, after Wiseman's late wife, Carroll, who died of cancer in 2020.

“We started this journey a few years ago, our tight-knit family of astronauts, and we lost a loved one,” Hansen said of the mission commander’s late wife, his voice shaking with emotion as he described her namesake’s location on the moon. «It's a bright spot on the moon, and we'd like to call it Carroll.»

As Orion zipped around the moon's far side, the crew watched as its surface eclipsed Earth, which in the background appeared to be a planet the size of a basketball.

Because the Moon rotates at the same speed as around the Earth, its far side always faces away from our planet, so few people — only the Apollo crews who orbited the Moon during their missions — have ever seen its surface directly.

Unique photos

Monday's flyby of the Moon plunged the crew into darkness and caused a 40-minute communications blackout as the Moon blocked their access to NASA's Deep Space Network, a global network of massive radio antennas the agency uses to communicate with the crew.

For the flyby of the Moon, astronauts were equipped with professional cameras that allowed them to take detailed photographs of the satellite through Orion's window, providing a rare and scientifically valuable opportunity to observe sunlight streaming along its edges.

The crew also had the opportunity to capture the rare moment when the Earth, dwarfed by its record distance from the planet, set and rose with the lunar horizon as they orbited the Moon, presenting a striking celestial change from the moonrise usually seen from Earth.

Based on materials from https://www.reuters

Xrust The crew of the Artemis II mission flew around the Moon