Artemis 2 crew could be the first to ever lay eyes on these lunar areas

On the moonthe far west of the country, straddling the border with the hidden side of the Moona landmark nearly 600 miles wide almost completely escapes view from Earth.

A colossal asteroid-like invader once tore apart the lunar crust, throwing off mountain rings and hollowing out a giant bowl, later flooded and filled with dark lava. The target still stands today, the scars commemorating that long-ago disaster.

From space orbital cameras, Mare Orientale, which means “eastern sea” in Latin, clearly reads as a fossil of violence, geometry and time. But despite the immensity of the lunar element, its location has forced it to remain one of the white whales of humanity.

“The Oriental has never been seen by human eyes,” said Reid Wisemancommander of NASAIt is Artemis II.

On the upcoming historic mission, the first to send humans into deep space in 50 years, astronauts Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Hammock Koch and Jeremy Hansen will circle the Moon in the Orion Pod. Depending on the latest tests and weather conditions, NASA could launch the spacecraft from February 6. As the crew passes the far side – the lunar hemisphere that never faces Earth – the astronauts can see landscapes that no one has ever seen before in the sun.

While the Apollo 8 astronauts first glimpsed the dark side in 1968, Artemis II will not be the first mission to have this observation point. But this time, the launch period, flight path and lighting conditions of the lunar terrain could allow the crew to study parts of the moon that humans have never seen directly, revealing subtle details of the surface that have remained hidden on previous missions.

The hidden side of the moon

THE distant hemisphere was once nicknamed “the dark side” because people had never seen it. This misnomer has led many people to wrongly assume that the dark side is shrouded in darkness, a confusion that persists to this day. In reality, the hemisphere receives as much light as the near side.

People only see the visible side because of a truly astronomical coincidence. It takes about a month for the Moon, located about 250,000 miles away, to orbit Earth. For the Moon to make a complete revolution on its axis, it takes approximately the same amount of time. Until October 1959, when the Soviet space program tipped the robot Luna 3 probe around the moon and took a few grainy photos, no one had any idea what the other side looked like.

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The Apollo crews only had brief views of the hidden side as they made a loop around the moon. Their launches were timed so that the nearest side, where they landed and explored, was bathed in sunlight. But this usually meant that when the near side was well lit, the far side was in shadow or had only a thin lit crescent.

By comparison, Artemis II will have a good chance of seeing 60% of the dark side that human eyes have never seen. This is important, mission leaders said, because despite the abundance of Images: robotic spaceship on the other hand, nothing beats first-hand observations.

After all, the main thing is to have people on site, not just machines.

Artemis II astronauts Jeremy Hansen, left, Christina Koch, center, and fellow backup Jenni Gibbons get hands-on geology training during a field trip to Iceland.
Credit: Canadian Space Agency

“Most people think of the Moon as just gray,” said Jacob Bleacher, NASA’s chief exploration scientist, “but the human eye is capable of detecting an enormous amount of detail.”

Three full hours of observations

NASA plans to make the most of this opportunity. Although they won’t put their boots on the moon, the Artemis II astronauts have received training in geology and science so they know what to look for when the moon fills Orion’s windows.

During the flight, they hope to spend three full hours devoted entirely to observations. Their eyes will scan the terrain on the other side, studying the variations in grayscale. These subtle nuances of how light or dark spots on the surface appear may allude to different rock types and ages.

Artemis II astronauts Christina Koch and Victor Glover, right, practice photographing lunar targets during a training exercise.
Credit: NASA/James Blair

NASA expects the crew to be able to alternate between looking with their own eyes, taking photos with cameras and talking about what they see with flight controllers in Houston. They will have checklists with them from the science teams of where to look, but they will also have the freedom to explore as they wish.

“The moon will look like a basketball within reach,” Bleacher said, “so they will be able to see a good portion of the moon, if not all of it.”

Future Artemis landing sites

Scientists believe that studying the dark side could provide a lot of insight. The near side has large dark spots, called Maria, which together resemble the face of the “man in the moon”. When lava filled the ancient craters, it obliterated other craters that recorded part of the moon’s geologic history. But on the other side, there are fewer of these dark spotswhich suggests that it has a cleaner history of cosmic collisions.

During the space race of NASA and the Soviet Union, no one ever landed on this invisible side, even robotically, because of how difficult it is. The Moon itself blocks communication between flight controllers on Earth and spacecraft on the other side. But in 2018, China placed a communications relay satellite in space about 40,000 miles beyond the Moon to enable the exchange of signals. The same year, China managed to become the first nation to implement an unmanned lander on the other side.

Not only could Artemis II’s observations enlighten scientists about the history of the solar system, but the crew could also help choose landing sites for future missions and identify compelling scientific objectives. They might just turn our familiar gray saucer into something new.

“We hope it’s not the ‘dark side,’” Koch said, referring to his former misleading nickname. “We hope this is the dark side illuminated.”