After capturing more than 175 gigabytes of data during this week’s lunar flyby, the crew of NASA’s Artemis 2 mission turned their cameras toward the heavens — and turned their hearts toward home.
Pilot Victor Glover told journalists during today’s space-to-ground news conference that he’s been thinking about the return to Earth ever since the day that he was assigned to the crew in 2023.
“At one of the first press conferences, we were asked, ‘What are we looking forward to?’ And I said, ‘Splashdown.’ It’s kind of humorous, but it’s literal as well, that we have to get back,” he said.
From here on out, Glover and his crewmates — commander Reid Wiseman, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — will be getting ready for their Orion space capsule to hit Earth’s atmosphere at a velocity of 24,500 mph and make a parachute-aided descent to a splashdown off the Southern California coast on Friday, April 10. Coverage of the crew’s return will be streamed via YouTube, with splashdown scheduled for 5:07 p.m. PT.
The foursome are already reflecting on the sights they saw and the friendships they forged. Among the highlights: a solar eclipse that created an eerie glow around the dark moon, and a 40-minute period between Earthset and Earthrise when communication was cut off.
“I’m actually getting chills right now just thinking about it. My palms are sweating,” Wiseman said. “But it is amazing to watch your home planet disappear behind the moon. You could see the atmosphere. You could actually see the terrain in the moon projected across the Earth as the Earth was eclipsing behind the moon. It was just an unbelievable sight, and then it was gone.”
Wiseman was also touched by his crewmates’ decision to name of the craters they saw after his wife, Carroll, who died at the age of 46 in 2020 after a five-year battle with cancer. “For me personally, that was the pinnacle moment of the mission,” he said. “For me, that was, I think, where the four of us were the most forged, the most bonded, and we came out of that really focused on that day ahead.”
The names proposed by the astronauts for two lunar features — Carroll Crater and Integrity Crater, which commemorates the name given to their Orion spacecraft — will be submitted to the International Astronomical Union for formal approval.
On the day after their lunar flyby, the astronauts turned one of their cameras in a different direction to capture a picture of the Milky Way.
“The crew could see the glowing ribbon of stars and filaments — a clear view of our home galaxy,” said Lakiesha Hawkins, acting deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate. The fact that there was no atmospheric interference meant the stars shone all the brighter.
The Carina Nebula is featured at the center of the image. The Coalsack Nebula lurks darkly toward the image’s lower left corner. And the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the Milky Way’s dwarf satellite galaxies, peeks in from the lower right corner.
Artemis 2’s main objective is to test the systems and procedures that will come into play for crewed lunar landings beginning as early as 2028. But Wiseman said the crew also had another objective in mind.
“What we really hoped in our soul is that we could, for just a moment, have the world pause and remember that this is a beautiful planet in a very special place in our universe, and we should all cherish what we have, what we have been gifted,” Wiseman said. “I think for the folks that decided to tune in, and it sounds like it was quite a few, this has happened. And for that, we are eternally grateful.”
Check back with Cosmic Log for daily updates about Artemis 2.
