During the flyby, the astronauts will split into pairs and take turns capturing the lunar views out their windows with cameras. At closest approach, they will come within 4,070 miles (6,550 kilometers) of the moon.
HOUSTON – The Artemis II astronauts are already the champions of a
fresh new era of lunar exploration. Now it’s time to set a new distance
record.
Launched last week on humanity’s first trip to the moon
since 1972, the three Americans and one Canadian are chasing after
Apollo 13’s maximum range from Earth. That will make them our planet’s
farthest emissaries as they swing around the moon without stopping on
Monday, April 6, and then hightail it back home.
Their roughly
six-hour lunar flyby promises views of the moon’s far side that were too
dark or too difficult to see by the 24 Apollo astronauts who preceded
them. A total solar eclipse also awaits them as the moon blocks the sun,
exposing snippets of shimmering corona.
“We’ll get eyes on the
moon, kind of map it out and then continue to go back in force,” said
flight director Judd Frieling. The goal is a moon base replete with
landers, rovers, drones and habitats.
A look at Artemis II’s up-close and personal brush with another world – our constant companion, the moon.
Apollo 13 holds the distance record from Earth
Apollo 13’s astronauts missed out on a moon landing when one of their oxygen tanks ruptured on the way there in 1970.
With
the three lives in jeopardy, Mission Control pivoted to a free-return
lunar trajectory to get them home as fast and efficiently as possible.
This routing relies on the gravity of Earth and the moon, and minimal
fuel.
It worked for Apollo 13, turning it into NASA’s greatest
“successful failure.” (For the record, flight director Gene Kranz never
uttered “Failure is not an option.” The line is pure Hollywood,
originating with the 1995 biopic starring Tom Hanks.)
How Artemis II will surpass Apollo 13
Commander
Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert reached a maximum 248,655 miles
(400,171 kilometers) from Earth before making their life-saving U-turn
on Apollo 13.
Artemis II’s astronauts are following the same
figure-eight path since they are neither orbiting the moon nor landing
on it. But their distance from Earth should exceed Apollo 13’s by more
than 4,100 miles (6,600 kilometers).
Artemis II’s Christina Koch
said late last week that she and her crewmates don’t live on
superlatives, but it’s an important milestone “that people can
understand and wrap their heads around,” merging the past with the
present and even the future when new records are set.
Artemis II astronauts take shifts for prime lunar views
During
the flyby, the astronauts will split into pairs and take turns
capturing the lunar views out their windows with cameras. At closest
approach, they will come within 4,070 miles (6,550 kilometers) of the
moon.
Because they launched on April 1, the rendezvous won’t have
as much of the far lunar side illuminated as other dates would have. But
the crew still will be able make out “definite chunks of the far side
that have never been seen” by humans, said NASA geologist Kelsey Young,
including a good portion of Orientale Basin.
They’ll call down
their observations as they photograph the gray, pockmarked scenes.
There’s a suite of professional-quality cameras on board, and each
astronaut also has an iPhone for more informal, spur-of-the-minute
picture-taking.
Young’s team made lunar geography flashcards for the astronauts to study before the flight.
“They’ve
practiced for many, many, many months on visualizations of the moon,”
she said over the weekend, “and getting their eyes on the real thing,
I’m really, really looking forward to them bringing the moon a little
closer to home on Monday.”
A total solar eclipse is in store during the moon flyby
The
upside of the April 1 launch is a total solar eclipse. The eclipse
won’t be visible from Earth — only from the Orion capsule — treating the
astronauts to several minutes’ worth of views of the sun’s outermost,
radiating atmosphere, the corona.
The astronauts will be on the
lookout for any unusual solar activity during the eclipse, Young said,
and will use their “unique vantage point” to describe the features of
the solar corona, or crown.
All four astronauts packed eclipse glasses to protect their eyes.
How long the brief blackout behind the moon lasts
Orion
will be out of contact with Mission Control for nearly an hour when
it’s behind the moon. The same thing happened during the Apollo
moonshots.
NASA is relying on its Deep Space Network to
communicate with the crew, but the giant antennas in California, Spain
and Australia won’t have a direct line of sight when Orion disappears
behind the moon for approximately 40 minutes.
These communication
blackouts were always a tense time during Apollo although, as Frieling
points out, “physics takes over and physics will absolutely get us back
to the front side of the moon.”
It’s homeward bound for Artemis II after the moon flyby
Once
Artemis II departs the lunar neighborhood, it will take four days to
return home. The capsule will aim for a splashdown in the Pacific near
San Diego on April 10, nine days after its Florida launch.
During
the flight back, the astronauts will link up via radio with the crew of
the orbiting International Space Station. This is the first time that a
moon crew has colleagues in space at the same time and NASA can’t pass
up the opportunity for a cosmic chitchat. The conversation will include
both members of the first all-female spacewalk in 2019: Koch aboard
Orion and Jessica Meir, on the station.