Artemis II astronauts break space record
Artemis II astronauts on a lunar flyby mission have broken Apollo 13’s distance record as humans travel further from earth than ever before.
Source: NASA
Artemis II astronauts have set a new record for the furthest distance humans have travelled from Earth as they start looping around the moon.
The history-making space mission was on Tuesday (AEST) undertaking a lunar flyby that would take seven hours.
NASA said the crew of four was the first to see the far side of the moon with human eyes.
The Orion spacecraft will move behind the moon and experience a communications blackout before swinging back.
The Artemis II broke the record by 6601 kilometres for the furthest distance humans have travelled from Earth, previously set by Apollo 13 in 1970 (400,171 kilometres).
The crew — Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen — will photograph both the near and far sides of the moon and describe what they see over their seven-hour flyby.
You might like
The astronauts have a unique perspective of the moon’s pock-marked lunar surface as they make their approach.
During an emotional moment, they requested to name one of the craters they could see after commander Reid Wiseman’s late wife Carroll, who died of cancer in 2020.
Another crater they wanted to name Integrity after their Orion spacecraft.
“A number of years ago we started this journey … and we lost a loved one and there’s a feature on a really neat place on the moon … at certain times of the Moon’s transit around Earth we will be able to see this from Earth,” said astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
The Artemis II crew, which launched from Florida last week, awoke for their sixth flight day to a recorded message from late Apollo 8 and 13 astronaut Jim Lovell, who died last year aged 97.
“Welcome to my old neighbourhood,” said Lovell, who also named a crater after his wife, Marilyn, in 1968.
Stay informed, daily
“It’s a historic day, and I know how busy you’ll be, but don’t forget to enjoy the view … good luck and godspeed.”
The astronauts later on Tuesday were due to reach their maximum distance from earth of about 406,780km — 6,606km beyond the record held by Lovell and his Apollo 13 crew for 56 years.
As they approached the distance record, they were sailing around the moon’s far side above its darkened surface as it eclipses what will appear to be a basketball-sized earth in the distant background.
The milestone is a climactic point in the nearly 10-day Artemis II mission, the first crewed test flight of NASA’s Artemis program.
The multibillion-dollar series of missions aims to return astronauts to the moon’s surface by 2028 before China, and establish a long-term US presence there over the next decade, building a moon base that would serve as a proving ground for potential future missions to Mars.
The lunar flyby will plunge the crew into darkness and brief communications blackouts as the moon blocks them from NASA’s Deep Space Network, a global array of massive radio communications antennas the agency has been using to talk to the crew.
The flyby will last about seven hours, during which the astronauts will use professional cameras to take detailed photos of the moon through Orion’s window, showing a rare and scientifically valuable vantage point of sunlight filtering around its edges.
The crew will also have the chance to photograph a rare moment in which their home planet, dwarfed by their record-breaking distance in space, will set and rise with the lunar horizon as they swing around, a celestial remix of a moonrise seen from earth.
A team of dozens of lunar scientists positioned in the Science Evaluation Room at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston will be taking notes as the astronauts, who studied an array of lunar phenomena as part of mission training, describe their view in real time.
-with AAP
Want to see more stories from InDaily SA in your Google search results?
- Click here to set InDaily SA as a preferred source.
- Tick the box next to "InDaily SA". That's it.
