Artemis II crew enters moon’s ‘sphere of influence’ ahead of historic flyby | Artemis II

The four astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II mission entered the Moon’s “sphere of influence”, where its gravity exerts a stronger pull on the spacecraft than that of Earth.

The crew made the transition four days, six hours and two minutes into the mission, approximately 39,000 miles (62,800 km) from the Moon and 232,000 miles (373,400 km) from Earth. The next key step will be the trip later Monday to the far side of the Moon, venturing deeper into space than any human has before.

“We’re all extremely excited for tomorrow,” Lori Glaze, deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development mission, said Sunday. “Our flight operations team and science team are ready for the first lunar flyby in over 50 years.”

The crew are the first astronauts to travel to the Moon in more than half a century, picking up where the Apollo program left off in 1972.

The Apollo flights of the 1960s and 1970s flew about 70 miles above the lunar surface, but the Artemis crew will be just over 4,000 miles away at their closest approach, allowing them to see the full spherical surface of the moon, including regions near both poles.

During the flyby, which will last approximately six hours, the crew will have to observe the celestial body with the naked eye, using on-board cameras. The trip promises views of the far side of the Moon that were too dark or too difficult to see for the 24 Apollo astronauts who came before them.

When Orion passes behind the Moon, the mission will enter a planned communications blackout of about 40 minutes, as the lunar surface will block the radio signals needed to connect the Deep Space Network with the spacecraft.

“I think it’s important to remember that we don’t always know exactly what they’re going to see,” Kelsey Young, the lead scientist on the Artemis II mission, said at a news conference on Sunday.

If all goes well, as the Orion spacecraft orbits the Moon, the astronauts – Americans Christina Koch, Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover and Canadian Jeremy Hansen – could set a record by venturing further from Earth than any human has before.

Astronauts have already been able to admire the lunar surface never before seen by the human eye. In the early hours of Sunday, the US space agency released an image taken by the Artemis II crew, showing a distant moon with the Orientale Basin (sometimes called the lunar “Grand Canyon”) visible.

“This mission marks the first time that the entire basin has been observed with human eyes,” NASA said. The huge crater, which looks like a target, has already been photographed by orbiting cameras.

As they awoke for the fifth day of the 10-day mission, the Orion spacecraft was nearly 215,000 miles (346,000 km) from Earth and 65,000 miles from the Moon, according to NASA’s online dashboard.

Former astronaut Charlie Duke, who walked on the Moon in 1972 as part of the Apollo 16 mission, sounded the alarm to the crew. “Below you on the moon is a photo of my family. I pray this reminds you that we in America and around the world are rooting for you. Thank you and the entire team on the ground for building on our Apollo legacy with Artemis,” the 90-year-old said.

NASA said the Artemis crew performed a manual piloting demonstration and revised their lunar flyby plan, including examining the surface features they need to analyze and photograph during their tour around the moon.

At the same time, “we’re very focused on the ecosystem, the life support system of the spacecraft,” NASA chief Jared Isaacman said in a CNN television interview on Sunday. “This is the first time that astronauts have flown on this spacecraft. This is what we are most interested in getting data.”

On the fifth day, the astronauts tested their “survival” suits, according to NASA. The bright orange jumpsuits are worn during takeoff and reentry, but also in emergency situations, such as cabin depressurization.

Even if the four astronauts will not land on the lunar surface, they should break the record for the greatest distance from Earth during their passage around the Moon.

The next day, “they’ll be on the far side of the Moon, they’ll eclipse that record and we’ll learn an awful lot about the spacecraft,” Isaacman said.

This information will be “essential for the establishment of subsequent missions like Artemis III in 2027 and, of course, the moon landing itself on Artemis IV in 2028”.

With Agence France-Presse