The Artemis 2 crew captured this view of the Moon from Orion’s window as it entered lunar orbit on flight day 5. The crew’s closest approach to the Moon occurs on flight day 6, when they will circle the far side before heading home. Credit: NASA
Three Americans and a Canadian on Monday traveled farther from Earth than any human has ever done.
NASA astronauts Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen – the crew of the Artemis 2 mission – have entered lunar orbit and are now the only humans to travel more than 248,655 miles (400,171 km) above Earth, a mark set by the Apollo 13 crew in 1970.
As it travels around the moon, the crew will spend time Friday afternoon and evening taking photographs and observing the lunar surface, becoming the first to do so in more than half a century. Astronauts also have a chance to be the first humans to get a look at the far side of the moon when it passes behind the moon around 6:45 p.m. EDT.
The crew woke up Monday to a message from Apollo 8 and 13 astronaut Jim Lovell, who recorded the message before his death in August. Hansen paid tribute to Lovell and other spaceflight veterans as Artemis 2 surpassed their decades-old distance records.
“From the cabin of integrity Here, as we travel the longest distance ever traveled from planet Earth, we do so to honor the extraordinary efforts and achievements of our predecessors in human space exploration,” Hansen said. “We will continue our journey into space even further, before Mother Earth succeeds in drawing us back to all that we hold dear.”
He continued: “Most importantly we choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to ensure that this record does not live long.”
Hansen, on behalf of the crew, also requested two new names for craters on the Moon – “Integrity” in honor of his ship, and “Carol” in tribute to Wiseman’s late wife, who died in 2020.
At approximately 1:30 a.m. EDT, the crew held a final briefing with the science officer at NASA Mission Control in Houston to go over lunar flyby objectives and timeline. The teams could not know the position of the light until after launch due to the changing angle of the Sun as the Moon revolved around the Earth. But they have been training for years to make the most of the opportunity in any situation.
Fortunately, as the Artemis 2 crew approaches, much of the Moon’s near side will be illuminated. Its targeting plan focuses on 30 sunlit areas, including the Orientale Basin – a 600-mile-wide (966 km), 3.8 billion-year-old crater that will be fully illuminated as astronauts pass through. They will study its well-preserved rings. The second target is the 400-mile-wide (644 km) Hertzsprung Basin, which astronauts will compare to Orientale.
After providing comments on the distance record, the crew prepared for a lunar observing period of approximately seven hours. The astronauts will pair up and take turns observing the Moon from small main cabin windows for 55–85 minutes at a time. integritytheir Orion crew capsule, while the other two exercise or work on other tasks. Human eyes and brains are more attuned to subtle changes in color and texture than machines, giving NASA a new perspective on the lunar surface.
The flyby will send the crew around the far side of the moon, which will appear as a waxing crescent moon about 20 percent illuminated. However, this will provide an opportunity to see the “impact glow” that occurs when debris falls on the Moon’s surface. It will observe any dust generated by impacts.
Astronauts will see an “Earthset,” when the planet moves behind the moon from their vantage point, as well as an Earthrise. Around 7 p.m., they will pass closer to the moon’s surface than humans have in decades, coming within a distance of about 4,000 miles (6,437 km). The mission is expected to reach its peak distance of 252,760 miles (406,778 km) from Earth by 7:07 p.m. The Moon will appear to astronauts about the size of a basketball held at arm’s length. Communications with Mission Control will be lost for approximately 40 minutes due to lunar interference.
At about 8:35 p.m., the crew will witness another miracle when the Sun passes behind the Moon from their vantage point, creating a one-hour eclipse. The flyby will end around 9:20 pm. The crew will send imagery back to Earth for NASA review overnight. They will discuss together on Tuesday morning, and pictures will be added to this page.
The flyby will stream on NASA+ and the space agency’s YouTube channels, as well as on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max and NBC Peacock.
Historic launch of Artemis 2
The lunar flyby is the most fascinating component of Artemis 2. But the astronauts have already accomplished a lot on the 10-day mission, which is a test flight for future crewed lunar landings starting with Artemis 4 in 2028.
integrity It took off on Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. Both spacecraft performed a series of engine burns to achieve integrity Placing it in orbit and setting it up for translunar injection – the final attempt to catapult it around the Moon.
In orbit, the crew took manual control of the spacecraft to perform proximity operations, rotating it around another vehicle to simulate docking. This will be needed for the Artemis lunar landing, which will add more spacecraft to the equation. After the experiment, they released a batch of CubeSat experiments from four countries.
The astronauts also spent hours exercising on the flywheel mechanism to counter the worsening effects of microgravity on bone and muscle. Coach accepted the unexpected challenge of fixing integrityHe was prevented from urinating after the toilet malfunctioned.
On Thursday, the second day of flight, the Orion European Service Module’s main engine fired for about six minutes to complete translunar injection, burning about 1,000 pounds (453 kg) of fuel to generate 6,000 pounds (2,722 kg) of thrust – enough to accelerate a car from zero to 60 mph (97 km/h) in under three seconds.
he put the maneuver integrity Not only for lunar orbit but also for return to Earth. It will perform what is known as free return, disengaging its propulsion systems and relying on natural gravity and small trajectory corrections to pull it home. Apollo 13 is the only mission to fly around the Moon in a free-return trajectory.
NASA canceled two of the three outbound trajectory correction burns on flight days three and four, determining that integrity Was on the way. The crew spent Friday and Saturday completing a variety of tasks, including practicing CPR and checking the spacecraft’s medical kit.
The astronauts reached the moon’s halfway point on Friday and transferred to NASA’s Deep Space Network, which supports long-distance calls beyond Earth’s orbit. On Saturday, Koch and Hansen worked on the controls for about 40 minutes in another manual piloting demonstration. The astronauts also reviewed a list of lunar surface features that they would photograph and analyze.
Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke greeted the crew with a message on their fifth day of flight on Sunday. The astronauts spent much of the day testing their bright orange crew survival suits, taking them on and off, checking for leaks, practicing sitting in their seats, and assessing their ability to eat, drink and move around. The Artemis 2 crew are the first to wear the new suits, designed for protection during the most intense phases of the mission.
By Monday morning, the moon’s gravitational pull became integrity Passing Earth’s signal, it entered the lunar neighborhood. It will return to Earth by Tuesday morning.
What will happen next?
On Tuesday morning, the crew will have completed their lunar orbit objectives, which include lunar observations, practicing emergency procedures, and testing integrityRadiation shelter, and conduct of science experiments.
integrity It will exit the lunar impact region about 41,000 miles (65,983 km) from the Moon. Tuesday will be mostly off-duty time, except for the first of three return trajectory correction burns. On Wednesday, Wiseman and Glover will conduct a third manual piloting demonstration.
Thursday’s ninth flight day, the last full day in space, will be spent largely preparing for reentry. Integrity has a heat shield designed to protect it and the crew from external temperatures of around 3,000 °F (1649 °C) as it reaches approximately 25,000 mph (40,234 km/h) during re-entry. The exact same mechanism flew on Artemis 1 in 2022. However, its heat-absorbing material unexpectedly cracked and stuck, puzzling engineers.
Instead of replacing it, NASA modified Artemis 2’s reentry profile to reduce stress on the heat shield. The crew expressed confidence in the system before the mission. The question is whether it will be able to hit a precise entry interface, or the point where the spacecraft re-enters the atmosphere.
“The main thing I want to do is I want to hit that dangerous entry interface right in the middle and make sure I get the crew home safely,” John Honeycutt, manager of NASA’s SLS program, said in March.
Before the big moment, the astronauts will go through re-entry and splashdown procedures with NASA’s flight control team. They will also undergo an “orthostatic intolerance garment fit check”, fitted for compression suits designed to help them avoid dizziness and lightheadedness as they adjust to Earth’s gravity.
After the final trajectory correction burn on Friday, the crew will collect equipment, adjust their seats, and return to their spacesuits. It will lose contact with mission control due to being covered in extremely hot plasma. integrity. When it emerges, parachutes will slow it to about 17 mph from re-entry velocity. A recovery team would retrieve the crew in the Pacific Ocean.
Once Artemis 2 is complete, NASA will review the crew’s in-orbit experiments and recover whatever data they can. integrity. The astronauts’ efforts will prepare the space agency for more ambitious Artemis missions, starting with Artemis 3 in 2027.
The 2027 mission will include one or both Human Landing System (HLS) vehicles being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin. The HLS spacecraft is designed to rendezvous with Orion and crew in lunar orbit, serving as transportation to and from the lunar surface. Thursday’s proximity operations demonstration was a dress rehearsal for that maneuver, but NASA will practice it again before sending humans to the moon.
If everything goes according to plan, the space agency will launch the Artemis 4 crew to the lunar surface in early 2028. After that, it aims to conduct semiannual crew landings and build a $30 billion permanent moon base.
editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared on Flying.
