The Farthest Journey of human history ended Friday evening when NASA’s Artemis II astronauts returned to Earth after a flight around the Moon. The crew’s Orion space capsule, named Integrity, crashed into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego shortly after 5 p.m. Pacific Time, marking the end of a 10-day, more than 695,000-mile journey past the far side of the Moon and back.
Artemis II’s four-person crew – Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch and Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen – traveled a greater distance from Earth than ever before. reaching 252,756 miles of our home planet.
“We especially choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to ensure that this record does not last long,” said Canadian astronaut Hansen and his crew surpassed the previous record of 248,655 miles set during Apollo 13.
Integrity began its fiery descent when the spacecraft hit Earth’s atmosphere at about 24,000 miles per hour, entering a communications blackout and decelerating from friction as its heat shield reached temperatures of about 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The plan was for the capsule to deploy two stabilizing parachutes at an altitude of about 22,000 feet, slowing it to about 200 miles per hour, then deploy pilot parachutes pulling the three main parachutes to about 6,000 feet. That would slow the spacecraft even further to about 20 miles per hour before it crashes into the ocean.
During their mission, the crew of Artemis II saw things no human has seen before. Flying higher above the lunar surface than the Apollo missions, the astronauts were the first to see the entire disk of the far side of the Moon. They also witnessed a solar eclipse near the moon as the sun slipped behind the lunar disk and illuminated it from behind.
“Humans probably didn’t evolve to see what we see,” NASA astronaut Glover said during the eclipse. He and the rest of the crew described a halo of light surrounding the moon while one side of the lunar surface was bathed in Earth’s light. Venus, Mars and Saturn shone among the stars. “It’s really hard to describe. It’s incredible.”
Artemis II began April 1 when the crew launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop the 322-foot-tall Space Launch System rocket, the most powerful vehicle ever carried by humans. After performing several engine burns to increase altitude and testing the spacecraft’s hand controls, the crew performed an engine start known as a translunar injection on the second day of the mission, which sent them on a trajectory toward the Moon.
Over the next three days, the crew tested the Orion spacecraft’s systems, practiced donning their spaceflight suits, performed additional course correction burns, manually piloted the Orion capsule again, and prepared for the lunar flyby around the far side of the Moon. They also had trouble flushing wastewater from the Orion capsule’s toilet into space.
“We definitely need to fix some of the plumbing,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. said during a conversation with the crew.
On April 6 at 12:41 a.m. Eastern Time, Artemis II entered the lunar sphere of influence, where the Moon’s gravity exceeds that of the Earth. That day, the crew made its closest approach to the moon, flying approximately 4,000 miles above the lunar surface. During the lunar flyby, the crew communicated with a team of scientists on the ground, before and after a roughly 40-minute communications outage on the far side, to describe geological features such as craters and canyons.
Just after breaking the distance record, the crew proposed names for two young, unnamed craters on the Moon. The first was named Integrity, after their spaceship, and the second was named Carroll, in honor of Commander Reid Wiseman’s wife, who died of cancer in 2020.
“It’s a bright spot on the moon, and we’d like to name it Carroll,” Hansen said over the radio as the emotional crew embraced each other, holding back tears.
From their perch near the Moon, astronauts were able to see the three-dimensional topography of the lunar landscape in a way not possible with photographs, gaining a real sense of the dynamic and rugged surface. At the lunar south pole, where NASA hopes to land a future Artemis mission as early as 2028, the astronauts described a steep and intimidating landscape. “It seems like a rougher, more difficult place to find a place to land and cross into the south, all the way around the South Pole,” Glover said.
They were able to clearly see differences in brightness on the lunar surface, particularly in the centers of young craters where whitish minerals had been freshly excavated by an impact. “It really looks like a lampshade with tiny holes and light shining through it,” NASA astronaut Koch said of the crater centers on the lunar surface. “They are so bright compared to the rest of the moon.”
Crew members also saw colors on the Moon that are not visible from Earth, depicting brownish spots all around the Moon and a greenish tint on the Moon. Aristarchus Platter.
“My current suspicion is that this is volcanic terrain,” says Trevor Graff, a NASA science officer who communicated with the astronauts during the mission. “Some minerals have greenish hues…We collected green glass during the Apollo mission that indicated fountains of fire coming from volcanoes.”
During the eclipse, astronauts were able to observe several impact flashes as small meteorites hit the moon. Better understanding the frequency of these impacts will be crucial to establishing a future base on the Moon, a stated goal of NASA’s Artemis program.
“Thousands of tons of extraterrestrial matter arrive on Earth every year, and most of it is made up of tiny particles that are slowed down high in the atmosphere,” says Laurie Leshin, a professor at Arizona State University and former director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “But on the Moon, there’s nothing to slow them down, so even small objects hit the Moon with a lot of force.”
As the astronauts flew near the Moon, they took photos, made audio recordings of their scientific conversations, and drew what they saw to help researchers on the ground identify the most intriguing targets for further study. Much of this data was transmitted back to Earth using a new laser communication system which transmits up to 260 megabits per second, much faster than previous radio systems.
“We can now direct the orbiters to the regions that they specifically designated where they saw these colors, and we can collect more data to understand what they actually saw,” says Juliane Gross, a member of NASA’s Artemis science team.
After the lunar flyby, the crew began their flight back to Earth, leaving the Moon behind. They continued to test the spacecraft’s systems, tried on specialized clothing to aid blood circulation, exercised using a flywheel fitness machine, and made the first radio transmission between a distant spacecraft and the crew currently aboard the International Space Station.
Over the past few days, astronauts have prepared the capsule for entry, descent and landing. Orion separated from the European Service Module, which provided engine propulsion, solar power and life support throughout the mission, approximately 30 minutes before hitting Earth’s atmosphere.
In addition to the wealth of scientific data on the Moon, the Artemis II astronauts returned with a new perspective on Earth, which they hope to share with the rest of the world.
“What we really hoped in our souls,” Commander Wiseman said, “is that we could for a moment take a break from the world and remember that this is a beautiful planet and a very special place in our universe.”
