The Moon as Seen Through the Eyes of Artemis II: From Meteor Flashes to Crater Naming

Four astronauts on NASA's Artemis II mission flew deeper into space than any humans before them, as they made a rare flyby of the far side of the Moon, revealing its surface exposed to cosmic bombardment.

The six-hour exploration of the otherwise hidden hemisphere of Earth's only natural satellite was marked by the astronauts' direct visual observations of meteor "impact flashes" that littered the darkened and heavily ridged lunar surface.

Scientists gathered in a conference room next to the mission control center at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston to record in real time lunar phenomena witnessed by the Artemis crew as their Orion spacecraft, about the size of an SUV, orbited the moon at a distance of about 402.000 kilometers (about 250.000 miles) from Earth.

The six-hour flyby, during which the spacecraft came within just 4.070 miles of the lunar surface, occurred on the sixth day of the spaceflight, which marks the first trip by astronauts near the moon since NASA's Cold War-era Apollo missions more than half a century ago, Reuters reports.

Six of those missions landed two-man crews on the Moon between 1969 and 1972 - the only 12 people to ever walk on its surface.

Artemis, the successor to the Apollo program, aims to repeat that success by 2028, before the first Chinese landing, and to establish a long-term American presence on the Moon over the next decade, including a base that would serve as a testing ground for possible future missions to Mars.

Although designed as a crewed dress rehearsal for future lunar missions, Artemis II brought back a wealth of new material to study, including meteor impact flashes recorded during yesterday's flyby, which were reminiscent of the sparks and trails of light described by some Apollo astronauts.

The Artemis II crew, who have been aboard the Orion capsule since launching from Florida last week, began their sixth day of flight on Monday by waking up to a pre-recorded message from the late NASA astronaut Jim Lovell, who flew on the Apollo 8 and Apollo 13 missions.

"Welcome to my old neighborhood," said Lovell, who died last year at the age of 97. "This is a historic day and I know how busy you'll be, but don't forget to enjoy the view... good luck and may luck follow you."

A few hours later, a crew of American astronauts Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, made spaceflight history by flying farther from Earth than any human before them - a distance of 252.756 miles.

The previous record, of about 248.000 miles, was set in 1970 by the Apollo 13 mission, after a near-catastrophic spacecraft failure cut short that mission and forced Lovell and his two crew members to use the Moon's gravity to return safely to Earth.

Naming craters

On the way to the far side of the Moon, Artemis astronauts spent some time giving temporary new names to lunar features that previously had no official names, Reuters reports.

In a radio message to mission control in Houston, Hansen suggested that one crater be named Integrity, after their Orion capsule, and that the other be named in honor of Reed Wiseman's late wife, Carol, who died of cancer in 2020.

"A few years ago, we began this journey as a close-knit astronaut family, and we lost a loved one," Hansen said of the mission commander's late wife, his voice trembling with emotion as he described the location of her lunar namesake. "It's a bright spot on the moon, and we'd like to call it Carol."

Hansen later said that the crew saw multiple lunar features that "no man had ever seen before, even in the Apollo program."

As Orion raced around the dark side of the Moon, the astronauts captured a rare moment in which the Earth, dwarfed by its record-breaking distance from the planet, set and rose above the lunar horizon as they circled the Moon - a striking celestial reversal from the Moonrise and Moonset typically observed from Earth.

Because the Moon rotates on its axis at the same speed as it orbits the Earth, its dark side always faces away from our planet, and only the astronauts of the Artemis and Apollo missions have ever directly viewed its surface.

Rare detailed photos

Monday's flyby of the moon plunged the crew into darkness and a 40-minute communication blackout, as the moon obscured them from NASA's Deep Space Network, a global system of giant radio antennas that the agency uses to communicate with the crew, Reuters reports.

After the flyby, US President Donald Trump congratulated the four crew members via audio link from the White House, while they appeared before cameras live via satellite broadcast from space.

"Today you made history and made all of America really proud, incredibly proud," Trump said. "You really inspired the whole world. Really, everyone is watching."

Koch told Trump that one of the most memorable moments of the flyby was "coming back from the dark side of the Moon and seeing the planet Earth for the first time again."

When asked by the president how they felt when all communication with Earth was cut off while Orion flew behind the Moon, Glover replied, "I said a short prayer, and then I had to move on."