A Historic Journey Around the Moon
NASA’s four Artemis astronauts have completed a remarkable journey, swinging behind the moon and beginning their return to Earth. This mission has set new records for space travel distance and brought humans closer to the lunar surface than they have been in over 50 years.
Jenni Gibbons, a Canadian space agency astronaut and backup crew member for Artemis II, addressed the astronauts as they emerged from an expected communications blackout around the moon. She said, “All of your flight controllers and your flight director have flipped their Artemis II patches around. We are Earth-bound and ready to bring you home.”
At their closest point to the moon, the Lockheed Martin Corp.-built Orion capsule came within an estimated 4,067 miles of the lunar surface. From the crew’s perspective, the moon would have appeared roughly the size of a basketball in someone’s outstretched hand.
The spacecraft reached its maximum distance from Earth minutes later, at 252,756 miles, according to NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman on X.
Breaking Records and Setting New Goals
The astronauts broke the distance record for space travel shortly before 2 p.m. New York time on Monday. They surpassed the distance the Apollo 13 crew traveled in 1970 of 248,655 miles (400,170 kilometers) from Earth, as reported by NASA.
Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen expressed his thoughts during the record-breaking moment: “We will continue our journey even further into space before Mother Earth succeeds in pulling us back to everything that we hold dear. But we most importantly choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long lived.”
Hansen then suggested naming two craters on the moon’s surface. The first was Integrity, after the nickname for the crew’s capsule, and the second was Carroll, after mission commander Reid Wiseman’s late wife. Wiseman and the crew were emotional during the suggestion and embraced.
A Milestone in Space Exploration
The close approach marked the pinnacle of NASA’s Artemis II mission, which launched on April 1, sending astronauts Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Hansen en route to the moon.
During the flyby, the Artemis II crew entered the predicted communications blackout before passing by the far side of the moon, blocking their line of sight with Earth. Similar blackouts occurred during the uncrewed Artemis I mission and the Apollo missions.
Leah Cheshier Mustachio, public affairs officer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, noted, “This is a poignant moment, as it’s the first time in over 50 years that we have humans completely unreachable by anyone else on Earth. No matter how distant or secluded we could reach anyone living on Earth. But while the crew flies behind the moon, it’s simply impossible to make contact with them.”
After the flyby, the crew spoke with President Donald Trump, who invited them to visit the White House. He said, “Today you’ve made history and made all America really proud, incredibly proud.”
Observing a Solar Eclipse and More
The astronauts had a unique chance to observe a solar eclipse from Orion. The sun passed behind the moon from the spacecraft’s vantage point, allowing the crew to image and study the sun’s outer atmosphere, known as the corona. They also had the opportunity to see and take pictures of various planets, including Venus, Mars, Saturn, and Earth.
Wiseman described the experience: “No matter how long we look at this, our brains are not processing this image in front of us. It is absolutely spectacular, surreal. There’s no adjective. I’m going to need to invent some new ones to describe what we’re looking at out this window.”
A Dress Rehearsal for Future Missions
The mission serves as an elaborate dress rehearsal meant to test vehicles that will be used to help land humans on the lunar surface in potentially two years.
Leading up to the closest approach, the crew took numerous images of the highest priority targets on the moon’s surface, describing in detail the colors and lighting of the surface they saw with their eyes. NASA has been hopeful that the astronauts will be able to use their eyes—“the best cameras in the universe,” as NASA flight director Judd Frieling put it—to see parts of the far side of the moon that no human has seen before.
“It turns out there’s about 60% of the far side, I think, that has never been seen by human eyes because of the lighting conditions,” Wiseman said before launch. “Apollo always wanted that light on the front side of the moon for their landing and launch capabilities.”
In the days after launch, NASA scientists worked to finalize the science objectives and list of lunar targets they want the crew to pay attention to during the flyby. By comparing how certain targets look from different angles and under different lighting conditions as the capsule moves, they hope the crew can help scientists learn more about how the moon’s surface evolved over time.
“The human eye, especially when it’s connected to a well-trained brain, which I assure you these four people have, are capable of, just in literally the blink of an eye, making nuanced color observations that Apollo observations told us can tell us something scientifically,” Kelsey Young, NASA’s Artemis science flight operations lead, said during a news conference on Saturday.
Historic Firsts
The Artemis II crew also broke more than just distance records on Monday. Glover became the first Black astronaut to travel to the moon, while Koch is the first woman to do the same. Hansen is also now the first Canadian to travel to the moon.
“To all of you down there on Earth and around Earth, we love you from the moon,” Glover radioed ahead of the loss of communications.
