The four-person crew of NASA's Artemis II mission are seeing parts of the moon on Monday that human eyes have never seen before.
The agency's Orion space capsule launched atop an SLS rocket from the Kennedy Space Center last week and sent humans on a mission to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.
Monday's lunar flyby — when the astronauts will circle the moon — will mark the farthest humans have ever traveled into space. At 1:57 p.m. Monday, the astronauts surpassed the Apollo 13 mission's distance record of 248,655 miles. The flyby, during which the crew will look out the windows and make live observations, will be about seven hours long, according to NASA.
The astronauts will also have the unique opportunity to observe a solar eclipse from the opposite vantage point, watching the sun disappear behind the moon.
While NASA does have photos of the moon from satellites such as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a planetary scientist from the agency explained in news conferences over the weekend why the human eye and human observations are vital to lunar understanding.
"I know that the data we will get back will inspire the next generation of scientists and explorers," Kelsey Young, Artemis II lunar science lead who wore earrings depicting an eclipse, told reporters on Sunday. "But it will also bring the moon closer and unite all of us."
The objectives and color nuance
On Monday morning, the three NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, woke up just 18,830 miles from the moon listening to "Good Morning" by Mandisa and TobyMac.
During the flyby, the crew will have a distinctive vantage point of the moon as a full disc. At any given point, half of the moon is illuminated, Young said, but at the closest approach during the mission, the far side of the moon will be about 21% illuminated.
Artemis II has 10 science objectives for the flyby. One is to observe color variations on the lunar surface.
"The human eye, especially when it's connected to a well-trained brain, which I assure you these four people have, are capable of just in literally the blink of an eye, making nuanced color observations," Young said.
Young said the astronauts will call out "subtle color nuances" during the flyby, particularly during their unprecedented views of the far side of the moon.
Young used the analogy of a sandbox: At the beach, the sand is not perfectly flat. It has texture and the grains are different particle sizes. Using a flashlight, Young described two angles of looking at the sandbox.
Shining a light directly on top of the sandbox, "you'll see the shades of color and albedo [reflectivity] on that surface." But using the same flashlight and moving it to the side of the sandbox, "you'll lose all the color nuance, but you will see topography and morphology," she said.
Applying this analogy to the flyby, while the sun — the light source — won't move, the spacecraft will. As a result, Young said, the astronauts will be able to look at the same locations more than once with different angles of illumination.
"We understand what [the moon is] made out of. We understand the topography, but we don't know what the crew are going to see in these specific illumination conditions from a scientific perspective," said Young. "And that's exciting."
The crew will pass over two previous human landing sites — Apollo 12 and 14 — and get a small glimpse of the lunar south pole, where NASA said humans might land as early as 2028.
Observations in real time and the 3D effect
NASA scientists have identified about 35 geological features for the crew to observe. Throughout the flyby, the astronauts will be giving descriptions a few times an hour in real time, Young said. The public can hear the observations on a livestream.
Young noted that NASA astronaut and mission commander Wiseman said over the weekend that he "can see much more topography" around the moon's Tycho Crater than in visualizations.
"He is seeing that 3D effect start to realize," Young said. "When they get even closer and they have that extreme flyby profile over a number of hours, they're really going to be able to tease out that dynamic between topography, surface texture, morphology and color and albedo and how and if those things overlap."
The public heard some of Wiseman's live commentary about the moon in a NASA Solar System post on X around 3 a.m. Sunday morning.
"You know I'm not one for hyperbole, but it's the only thing I can come up with. Just seeing Tycho, there's mountains to the north, you can see Copernicus, Reiner Gamma. It's just everything from the training but in three dimension and absolutely unbelievable," Wiseman said. "This is incredible."
Mission Control responded with a chuckle: "Copy, moon joy."
Distance from the moon
While Apollo 13 traveled significantly closer to the moon and several crewed Apollo missions actually landed on it, the closest Orion will come to the surface of the moon is 4,070 miles. But Young noted that Artemis II's distance is actually an asset for its scientific objectives, as it will allow the astronauts to have a whole view of the moon with different illumination changes.
During the Apollo missions, geologists trained astronauts to look for certain features on the moon. Since this flyby will be at a higher altitude than those missions, it will allow the astronauts to assess what they're seeing at a different scale.
But will there still be cameras?
Yes.
The spacecraft will be equipped with two Nikon D5 and one Nikon Z9, and Young said the agency will downlink as many photos as possible after the flyby. She expects thousands.
"We'll be getting some out to the public as soon as we possibly can," Young said.
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