The astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II mission have shared their profound emotions experienced while orbiting the moon, capturing images of its impact craters, fissures, and ridges as they began their journey back to Earth.
The crew, who worked in pairs at the windows of the Orion capsule, captured highly anticipated photographs, including the Earth rising behind the moon, a solar eclipse, and portions of the Orientale impact basin—590 miles (950 kilometers) wide—that had never been seen by the naked eye before.
Additional photographs are expected to provide insights into the brown, green, and orange shades noted by the astronauts against the moon’s grey landscape, as well as potential subtle layers of lunar dust observed during the Earthrise event.
On Monday, the astronauts executed a maneuver that took them around the far side of the moon, temporarily severing their communication with mission control for 40 minutes. They are now on a trajectory back to Earth, with the 250,000-mile return flight scheduled to conclude with a splashdown off the coast of San Diego at 8:07 PM Eastern Time on Friday.
NASA astronaut Christina Koch, the first woman to orbit the moon, expressed her emotional response to viewing the lunar surface up close. “I was overwhelmed by the sight of the moon. It was a fleeting moment that I couldn’t replicate, but it instantly connected me to the lunar landscape, making it feel tangible,” she remarked.
Koch noted the striking brightness of the newly formed craters, which illuminated the surface like tiny points of light on a lampshade. “They stand out so vividly compared to the rest of the moon,” she added.
Victor Glover, who made history as the first Black man to travel beyond low Earth orbit, commented on the emotional experience of looking out the window. “I felt transported to the surface, exploring that incredible terrain,” he shared with NASA’s capsule command team. The crew is set to discuss their observations of the moon’s far side with the mission’s scientific team on Tuesday.
The Orion spacecraft launched on April 1 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard NASA’s Space Launch System, designed for deep space missions. The crew includes astronauts Koch, Glover, Reid Wiseman, and Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency.
On Monday, the crew achieved a new record for the farthest distance humans have traveled from Earth, reaching 252,756 miles—surpassing the previous Apollo 13 record of 248,655 miles set in 1970. During their closest approach, they came within 4,070 miles of the lunar surface.
As the mission entered the return phase, NASA flight controllers in Houston symbolically flipped their mission patches, replacing the design featuring the moon in front of Earth with one showing the moon behind Earth.
The capsule will return to Earth after detaching the service module that powered the lunar journey. One of the most critical phases is re-entry, during which the capsule will enter the atmosphere at speeds exceeding 20,000 mph, causing the heat shield to endure temperatures above 1,600°C (2,900°F).
During the return of the Artemis I mission in 2022, damage to the heat shield was observed upon re-entry. To mitigate risks for Artemis II, the capsule will approach at a steeper angle, reducing the duration the heat shield is exposed to potentially damaging temperatures.
Upon successfully navigating the atmosphere, the spacecraft will deploy parachutes to slow its descent before splashing down in the North Pacific Ocean.
