Space and Physics
PUBLISHED
The Artemis II astronauts continue to share images, videos, and insights from the incredible experience they had traveling around the moon. The latest video from Reid Wiseman shows the moment Earth set behind the Moon as the Artemis II crew was going around the far side of the Moon.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.In the hours after that historic part of the journey, when the crew got farther from Earth than any human has gone before, we saw the beautiful images of Earthset taken by astronaut Christina Koch. The other two team members, Victor Glover and Jeremy Hansen, were at window 3 looking at this spectacle. This left commander Wiseman with the docking hatch window to try and capture the beauty.
“Like watching sunset at the beach from the most foreign seat in the cosmos, I couldn't resist a cell phone video of Earthset,” Wiseman said in his post.
“I could barely see the Moon through the docking hatch window but the iPhone was the perfect size to catch the view...this is uncropped, uncut with 8x zoom which is quite comparable to the view of the human eye. Enjoy,” he continued.
A lot of science work was going on around the filming of that video. Beyond Wiseman’s phone there were a lot of cameras pointed at the Moon, and the astronauts were directly observing the geology of the lunar surface underneath them.
They looked for little flashes of light, telltale signs of meteorite impacts. We can see them from Earth as well when the near side is in nighttime (or during a lunar eclipse). The Artemis II crew reported five impacts in a matter of minutes, and there were cameras filming the Moon’s surface, so there might be more captured. This will inform risk assessments for putting humans on the lunar surface.
Lunar geology was also an important focus. NASA missions like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Chinese Chang’e-4 and Chang’e-6, among others, have delivered insights into the far side. This was the first time that human eyes directly looked at some of the far side regions, and the astronauts were tasked with finding impact craters and ancient lava flows.
The four of them put forward names for two features on the Moon, one named Integrity after their Orion spacecraft and the other named Carroll after Artemis II commander Wiseman’s late wife.
Commander Wiseman had previously hoped that eventually Artemis II would be forgotten, eclipsed by the expected future achievements of the Artemis program. If he’s committed to that, he should stop sharing such amazing videos!
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