Category: Cosmic Space

While the astronauts of NASA’s Artemis 2 mission were in the midst of humanity’s first trip around the moon in 53 years, the mission’s lead lunar scientist said “moon joy” was her team’s new motto.

Now that the crew members are back on Earth, they’re reveling in moon joy — and reflecting on the wider meaning of their mission.

Astronaut Christina Koch told the audience at today’s homecoming celebration, held at Ellington Airport near NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, that she was once asked what defines a crew.

“A crew is inescapably, beautifully, dutifully linked,” she said. “So, when we saw tiny Earth, people asked our crew what impressions we had. And honestly, what struck me wasn’t necessarily just Earth. It was all the blackness around it. Earth was just this lifeboat, hanging undisturbingly in the universe. … I know I haven’t learned everything that this journey has yet to teach me, but there’s one new thing I know, and that is: Planet Earth, you are a crew.”

It’s prime time for the Artemis 2 mission’s historic round-the-moon flyby, which includes setting a new distance record for human travel beyond Earth and laying eyes on a supersized solar eclipse.

The lunar encounter on April 6 will mark the first time astronauts have traveled to the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. They won’t be landing this time, but they will be getting a close look at features on the lunar far side that human eyes have never seen directly before.

Artemis 2’s Orion space capsule is on a slingshot trajectory that will take advantage of the moon’s gravitational field to execute a U-turn and head back toward Earth without the need for a major engine burn.

The show starts at 1 p.m. ET (10 a.m. PT) on NASA+, YouTube and other streaming video services.

“I do anticipate a big bump … as we have this really key moment in time where we’re flying around,” Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, said today. “We’re breaking the Apollo record. We’re going to have an eclipse, we’re going to have all of these amazing observations. I really think we’re going to get another big spike. I’m really looking forward to that.”

But it will take hours for the flyby to run its course. It will take hours more for the crew to download the imagery they capture, and it’s likely to take days longer to share all the fruits of the six-hour flyby sequence with the public. The sense of drama won’t be as high as it was for, say, the “Apollo 13” movie. But Kelsey Young, Artemis 2’s lunar science lead, says it will be an important event nonetheless.

“This is a unifying moment for all of us, and we’ve put our best foot forward into preparing this mission for success,” she said. “We know what it’s going to mean to connect to the moon in that way.”

NASA’s Artemis 2 astronauts are sharing perspectives of Earth that haven’t been seen by human eyes for more than 50 years — from a spaceship that’s traveling from our home planet to the moon.

Two days after the launch of the crew’s Orion space capsule, the first high-resolution photos looking back at Earth are hitting NASA’s image repository. “You guys look great,” astronaut Christina Koch said.

Today’s star of the show is a blue-marble photo captured by mission commander Reid Wiseman after Orion completed its translunar injection burn and headed outward from Earth orbit on April 2. The faint greenish glint of auroras can be seen at upper right and lower left. The brighter glow of zodiacal light is visible at lower right.

“You could see the entire globe, from pole to pole,” Wiseman said during a news briefing. “You could see Africa, Europe, and if you looked really close, you could see the northern lights. It was the most spectacular moment, and it paused all four of us in our tracks.”

NASA’s Orion space capsule successfully fired its main engine today for a maneuver that sent the four astronauts of the Artemis 2 mission out of Earth orbit and onward to the moon.

The translunar injection burn lasted five minutes and 50 seconds, and committed the spacecraft to a course that will result in a lunar flyby and a gravity-assisted U-turn on April 6. “Looks like a good burn,” capsule communicator Chris Birch said at Mission Control in Houston.

The trajectory is designed so that the capsule, christened Integrity, will return to Earth on April 10 without requiring any further major engine firings. “From this point forward, the laws of orbital mechanics are going to carry our crew to the moon, around the far side and back to Earth,” said Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate.

After the burn, Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen paid tribute to the Artemis team. “We firmly felt the power of your perseverance during every second of that burn,” he told Mission Control. “Humanity has once again shown what we are capable of, and it’s your hopes for the future that carry us now on this journey around the moon.”