The four astronauts of Nasa’s Artemis II mission entered the moon’s gravitational sphere of influence early Monday morning as they cruised along a path that will soon take them over the shadowed, lunar far side to become the farthest-flying humans in history.
The Artemis II crew, flying in their Orion capsule since launching from Florida last week, are due to awake around 10:50am ET (7:50pm PKT) on Monday for their sixth flight day.
By 7:05pm ET (4:05am PKT), they will reach the mission’s maximum distance from Earth of roughly 252,757 miles, 4,102 miles beyond the record held by the Apollo 13 crew for 56 years.
As Nasa astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen approach the distance record, they will be sailing around the moon’s far side, witnessing it from roughly 4,000 miles above its darkened surface as it eclipses 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 programme.
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.
Officially starting at 2:34pm ET, 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 six hours, during which the astronauts will use professional cameras to take detailed photos through Orion’s window of the silhouetted moon, showing a rare and scientifically valuable vantage point of sunlight filtering around its edges in what will effectively be a lunar eclipse.
They will also have the chance to photograph a rare moment in which their home planet, dwarfed by their record-breaking distance in space, will rise from the lunar horizon as their capsule emerges from the other side, 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 Centre 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
‘Far side of the Moon’
The astronauts had started seeing features of the celestial body never before viewed with a naked human eye.
In the wee hours of Sunday, Nasa published an image taken by the Artemis crew that showed a distant Moon with the Orientale basin visible.
“This mission marks the first time the entire basin has been seen with human eyes,” the US space agency said.
The massive crater, which resembles a bullseye, had been photographed before by orbiting cameras.
Koch, speaking to Canadian children live from space, said the crew was most excited to see the basin — sometimes known as the Moon’s “Grand Canyon”.
“It’s very distinctive and no human eyes previously had seen this crater until today, really, when we were privileged enough to see it,” Koch said during the question-and-answer session hosted by the Canadian Space Agency.
Near the end of their flyby, the astronauts will witness a solar eclipse, when the Sun will be behind the Moon and hidden from view aside from its outermost atmosphere, the solar corona.
The four astronauts will also spend some time testing their “Orion crew survival system” spacesuits.
The orange suits protect the crewmembers during launch and reentry, but are also available for emergency use — they can provide up to six days of breathable air.
The astronauts are the first to ever wear the OCSS suits in space, and will test their functions, including how quickly they can put them on and pressurise them.
Nasa said the Artemis crew has completed a manual piloting demonstration and reviewed their lunar flyby plan, including reviewing the surface features they must analyse and photograph during their time circling the Moon.
“We’re focusing very much on the ecosystem, the life support system of the spacecraft,” Isaacman told CNN.
“This is the first time astronauts have ever flown on this spacecraft before,” he said. “That’s what we’re most interested in getting data from”.
