The four astronauts aboard the first mission to the Moon in more than half a century have broken a new historical record. The crew of the , Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, have become the humans who have traveled the furthest in space in the entire history of space exploration.
“We want to pay tribute to our predecessors in human space exploration,” specialist Jeremy Hansen told the Control Center. “We take advantage of this opportunity to challenge the current and future generations so that this distance record does not take long to be broken again,” added the Canadian astronaut.
Just after crossing the greatest distance reached by a human ship, one of the most emotional moments of the mission so far has been experienced. Astronauts have named two new craters on the Moon. The first is named after Integritythe name that the astronauts have given to their ship. The second is Carroll, a name that Commander Reid Wiseman has spelled close to tears. It is a tribute to his wife, Anne Carroll Taylor Wiseman, who died of cancer in 2020 when she was 46 years old. Wiseman and Hansen then hugged each other.
To commemorate the Artemis II mission, the astronauts announced their suggestion to rename certain features on the Moon to honor the Orion spacecraft, named Integrity, as well as commander Reid Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll.
— NASA (@NASA)
This mission has also accomplished other historical milestones: , and Glover as the first African-American. Canadian Jeremy Hansen is the only non-American person who has approached the satellite. A few days ago, these four astronauts became the ones who have made the highest orbit of the Earth and Koch the woman who has been the highest in space. She already had the record for staying in space continuously.
“We have entered the sphere of influence of the Moon. Now we are falling towards the Moon,” after the ship had met “another amazing milestone.” Until that moment, Orion’s path had been determined by the attraction of the Earth’s gravity, which was gradually weakening, like someone climbing an increasingly less steep uphill slope. After the crucial moment, lunar gravity takes over and the path is already downhill throughout the entire Moon flyby. When the ship emerges on the opposite side of the satellite, Earth’s gravity will once again pull Orion and its crew will begin the return home. All this choreography has been perfectly calculated with the laws of orbital mechanics.
At the stroke of eight in the afternoon today in mainland Spain, the Orion spacecraft surpassed 400,171 kilometers from Earth, the previous distance record set by the accident crew of the , launched in April 1970. The crew of that mythical mission had to improvise to use lunar gravity and return to Earth after a major technical failure. Everyone managed to return home safely, and what is most remembered from that adventure is the famous phrase: “Houston, we have had a problem. The commander, who devised a way to save his crew, was one of the most experienced astronauts of the Apollo program: he traveled to space four times, he was the first human to go to the Moon twice, but he was never able to land on it, as the Apollo 13 mission had planned.
The Artemis 2 astronauts today remembered the crew of the 1970s mission in connection with the mission control center in Houston, Texas.
Shortly after four in the afternoon, the Artemis 2 astronauts have prepared their spacecraft for this 10-day mission: the flyby of the Moon, including its far side. The scientific observations of the satellite will begin at 8:45 p.m., peninsular time. At their closest approach, the astronauts will take turns photographing a total of 35 lunar sites determined by the mission’s scientific team, whose leaders are in Houston to provide direct support in this process. While one astronaut captures images, another will simply look out the window and NASA has said on several occasions that it does not matter how good a camera is, the human eye is superior because it has a privileged three-dimensional vision capacity of the craters, seas and other geographical features that the astronauts will contemplate during about six hours of observation.
Glover, Wiseman, Koch and Hansen will probably be the first humans to contemplate part of the far side of the Moon, since a good part of it remained invisible for all the Apollo missions of the 60s and 70s.
One of the declared objectives is the imposing , a huge impact crater that is barely visible from Earth, as it is located right on the edge of the far side. It is the enormous scar left by a meteorite about 100 kilometers in diameter that crashed into the Moon 3.8 billion years ago. On our satellite, a body without an atmosphere or active geology, the mountains are basically the edges of the craters – there are millions of them; and in this eastern sea, with its three concentric rings, are some of the highest.
Another great objective is to contemplate the south pole of the satellite, specifically the , where the possible landing points of the Artemis 4 mission are located, which will be launched in 2028 and which will be the first to reach the surface of the planet in more than half a century — it is also the place where China landed robotic probes in history.
NASA wants a woman and a non-white person to achieve this milestone. These observations are going to be complicated because the south pole is going to be very close to the terminator, the limit between the illuminated and dark part, explained , NASA’s head of scientific observations for Artemis 2. “On the far side, the astronauts will try to fix their eyes on the region of the south pole. Due to the lighting, they will only be able to see the limit of the polar region and the Aitken basin. This will be one of their objectives, to see how much they can observe of this region located right along the terminator,” she said. Young detailed in a press conference early Sunday morning, Spanish time.
At the stroke of midnight another big milestone will happen: communication with the Orion capsule will be lost for about 40 minutes. It is something planned, since the Moon will be coming between the ship and NASA’s large antennas on Earth. The closest approach to the lunar surface will be 6,550 kilometers, NASA has detailed. At that time, astronauts will be able to see 21% of the satellite’s entire disk, due to the position of the Sun.
Approximately an hour later, the Orion spacecraft will reach its furthest point from our planet. The exact distance estimated by NASA is 406,772 kilometers from Earth, above the previous record.
