An 'earthset' captured during the Artemis II crew’s flyby of the Moon. Photo: NASA
NASA’s Artemis II astronauts have beamed back more than 50 gigabytes’ worth of pictures and other data from their lunar rendezvous, which set a new distance record for humanity.
The highlight is an “earthset” photo reminiscent of Apollo 8’s earthrise shot from 1968.
Astronaut Christina Koch described being awestruck by not just the beauty of earth, “but how much blackness there was around it”.
“It just made it even more special. It truly emphasised how alike we are, how the same thing keeps every single person on planet earth alive,” she told the space station crew in Houston.
“The specialness and preciousness of that really is emphasised” when viewing the home planet from the moon, she added.
A close-up of the Moon’s surface. Photo: NASA
On Tuesday afternoon (AEST), the astronauts had the “indescribable” experience of witnessing a total solar eclipse while hurtling around the moon.
“No matter how long we look at this, our brains are not processing this image in front of us. It is absolutely spectacular, surreal…,P said Commander Reid Wiseman.
The first lunar explorers since Apollo 17 in 1972, the three Americans and one Canadian are aiming for a splashdown off the San Diego coast on Friday night local time (Saturday morning AEST) to wrap up the nearly 10-day test flight.
It sets the stage for 2027’s Artemis III, a lunar lander docking demo in orbit around earth. Artemis IV will follow in 2028 with two astronauts attempting to land near the lunar south pole.
The Moon is seen backlit by the sun during a solar eclipse. Photo: NASA
As for the Orion capsule’s pesky potty, mission control assured the astronauts that no maintenance was required.
The toilet has been on-and-off limits to the crew ever since last week’s launch, prompting them to rely on a backup bag-and-funnel system for urinating.
“We definitely have to fix some of the plumbing,” NASA administrator Jared Isaacman told the crew following their lunar flyby on Monday night.
The Artemis II crew wear eclipse viewers. Photo: NASA
Aside from the toilet and other relatively minor matters, the mission has gone well, Isaacman noted at a news conference on Tuesday.
“But I’ll breathe easier when we get through re-entry and everybody’s under chutes and in the water,” he said.
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