Taking time out to send Easter greetings to Earth, four Artemis 2 astronauts closed in on the moon on Sunday, already seeing unexpected details on the surface and giving scientists a taste of things to come during the moon’s distant pass on Monday evening.
Artemis 2 commanders Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch also presented “astronaut wings” to Canadian crewmate Jeremy Hansen, making his first space flight, before completing planned tests of the new Artemis pressure suit.
But first, Koch wished flight controllers a happy Easter, saying, “We wanted to take a minute to celebrate the holiday.”
“This time of year is something that many religions and many cultures hold dear,” he said. “It is a time of emotions like happiness as well as seriousness, a time to respect what is happening in our world and our religious beliefs.
“The other side of it is our family tradition. And I know for me, if I were on Earth right now, I would be in Houston with my family and we would be hiding confetti eggs in the backyard and watching two very sweet little girls try to find them.”
He said the crew “hid some eggs around the cabin” to mark the occasion. “They were kind of dehydrated scrambled eggs,” she added, “but we’re all very happy with them.”
Hansen said that “No matter your faith or religion, the teachings of Jesus to me were always a very simple truth, love, universal love, love yourself and love others.”
The two major goals of the Artemis 2 flight are to thoroughly test the Orion lunar rover and to work through the procedures and technologies needed to safely guide future crews to the Moon. The Artemis 2 crew also plans a full agenda of science observations as it passes behind the far side of the moon on Monday afternoon and evening.
Looking at the moon overnight Saturday, Koch told flight controllers, “The moon we’re looking at is not the moon you see from Earth,” adding that even from about 75,000 miles away from their target, they could easily discern subtle differences in topology and brightness.
He said Glover was “absolutely mesmerized” by a huge basin where “you can actually see the terrain. It’s not an albedo change, it’s not a shadow. You can really just tell that those are the terrain features of the multi-hued craters there.”
Glover initially thought the structure was Mare Orientale, or “Eastern Sea”, a high-priority target that straddles the terminator separating the Earth-facing side of the Moon and the normally invisible far side.
Jackie Mahaffey in Mission Control responded that “We think based on your description of the basin you saw, that (Mare) is Imbrium.”
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” the coach agreed. “I never noticed that Imbrium has such a distinctive high albedo ring defining it. It’s also notable that we clearly have a full moon. We can’t detect any terminators at all. It looks like a full moon all around.”
Mare Imbrium, or “Sea of Rain”, is 710 miles in diameter, one of the Moon’s largest “seas”, or maria, formed by a massive impact event several billion years ago. It is surrounded by mountains that were formed by the impact.
Artemis 2 commander Reed Wiseman agreed that the view of the Moon was spectacular, even from a great distance.
“I’m not one to exaggerate, but it’s the only thing I can think of just looking at (the crater) Tycho, there are mountains to the north, you can see Copernicus… It’s just everything from training, but in three dimensions and absolutely incredible. It’s incredible.”
“Moon’s pleasure,” Mahaffey replied.
Wiseman, Glover, Koch and Hansen were launched on Wednesday and after spending a day investigating the Orion spacecraft, the ship left Earth’s orbit on Thursday and headed toward the moon.
On Saturday night, Koch said the crew had begun marking the moon’s decreasing distance instead of measuring its increasing distance from Earth. At the time he spoke, the Orion spacecraft was 76,362 nautical miles from the Moon and 168,000 miles from Earth.
Before going to bed, the astronauts were told that engineers were able to restore Orion’s toilet to normal operation, after it had previously had trouble flushing stored urine overboard.
The radio message came from Mission Control, “You may use all restrooms at this time.”
“And the crew rejoices!” The coach said. “Thank you!
The crew started Easter Sunday in space with a wakeup call featuring CeeLo Green’s “Working Class Heroes” and a recorded message from retired astronaut Charlie Duke.
“Hello Reed, Victor, Christina and Jeremy. This is Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke,” he said over the radio. “John Young and I landed on the Moon in 1972 in a lunar module, which we named Orion. I was glad to see a different kind of Orion that is helping to return humans to the Moon.
“Thank you and the entire team on the ground for creating a family. I pray this reminds you that we are cheering you on across America and around the world. Thank you and the entire team on the ground for carrying on our Apollo legacy with Artemis. May you have a safe journey home, God willing.”
The crew’s primary objective Sunday was to make do with their bright orange pressure suits, which are designed to keep an astronaut alive for more than six days if their spacecraft loses air pressure or suffers some other type of catastrophic failure.
Wiseman and his colleagues planned to wear their suits in the tight confines of the Orion capsule to give flight controllers a better idea of how quickly they could be put on in an emergency.
They planned to assess their ability to pressurize the suits, practice climbing up and down from their seats while suited up, walk using a dispenser in the suit’s helmet, and eat and drink.
Just after midnight, the Orion capsule was expected to reach the Moon’s “impact zone”, where lunar gravity would begin to exert a greater pull on the spacecraft than Earth’s.
The astronauts will reach a distance of 248,655 miles from Earth at 1:56 p.m. Monday, surpassing the record set by the Apollo 13 crew in 1970. Wiseman and company will fly past the moon and out of contact with Earth for about 40 minutes beginning at 6:47 p.m. Monday.
While out of contact, the crew will pass within about 4,070 miles of the lunar surface on approach and three minutes later will set a new distance record of 252,760 miles. They will come back in contact with Earth at 7:27 pm
But they will be able to observe features on the far side well before and after it passes directly behind the Moon and even see a solar eclipse when the Moon passes in front of the Sun.
“We have amazing camera data from decades of orbiting spacecraft,” said Kelsey Young, a member of the Artemis lunar science team.
“However, the human eye, especially when it is coupled to a well-trained brain—which I assure you these four people have—is capable of making the subtle color observations in the blink of an eye that the Apollo observations told us can tell us something scientifically.”
