Amazing Views From Artemis 2’s Historic Lunar Flyby
NASA
It’s been a while since humans have witnessed in person the celestial scenes from deep space. NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen have given us some awesome views from their enviable vantage point over the past week, as part of the Artemis 2 mission to the Moon aboard the Orion module, named Integrity by her crew.
Launched on April 1st, the mission features the first crewed flight of the Space Launch System (SLS) and NASA’s Orion crew capsule. The crew spent the first days in Earth orbit, putting the spacecraft through its paces and performing several approach tests using the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) as a target.
Catching sight of the Artemis 2 mission in orbit was tough for ground-based observers, but not impossible. Filipp Romanov managed to spot the mission using remote telescopes based in Australia.
NASA / Reid Wiseman
On Approach
Then, it was off to the Moon. The mission performed a perigee raising maneuver and translunar injection burn on the mission’s Day 2, sending the spacecraft on a trajectory that would take it past the Moon on a free-return trajectory reminiscent of the Apollo 13 rescue maneuver. As they were on their way outbound, the crew snapped an iconic image of a crescent Earth:
NASA
Artemis 2’s Lunar Flyby
Finally, on Day 6 of the mission, the crew began their seven-hours-long flyby around the Moon.
NASA
As the NASA broadcast began, Hansen spoke to mission control, noting a bright crater on the boundary between the Moon’s nearside and farside. Parts of that boundary, including the unnamed crater, can sometimes be seen from Earth as the Moon wobbles in its tidally locked orbit. In an emotional message, Hansen requested permission from ground control to name the crater for his crewmate’s late wife, Carroll Taylor Wiseman, who passed away in 2020. The astronauts as well as mission controllers on Earth took a moment of silence after this message.
Carroll Crater is to the northwest of Glushko, at the same latitude as Ohm Crater, the crew noted. The crew also requested another unnamed crater — almost directly between Orientale to Ohm — be named for the capsule, Integrity. NASA hasn’t yet confirmed either crater’s location. Both names are unofficial for now and will be submitted to the International Astronomical Union for approval.
As expected, the mission set a record for the farthest humans have ever traveled from Earth: Artemis 2 reached a perigee of 406771 kilometers (252,756 miles) away, 6,616 km farther than the previous record held by Apollo 13 in 1970. The record was set on Day 6, Monday April 5th at 7:02 p.m. EDT. Just prior to that, Artemis 2 made its closest approach to the Moon, taking the crew just 6,545 km from the lunar surface. At its most distant point, the mission was traveling at 60,863 miles per hour relative to Earth, and 3,139 mph relative to the Moon.
The crew dimmed the cabin lights during the flyby to aid their official sight-seeing as they passed over the lunar farside. They watched craters pass by both visually and with cameras angled just so to minimize reflections from the windows. Most of those images have not yet been released, but those that have been are available in NASA’s gallery.
The team also made observations of future Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) mission landing sites, including the enigmatic Reiner Gamma lunar swirl. Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander is set to head there on its IM-3 mission later this year.
Along with views of the lunar farside, Day 6 also saw the mission pass behind the Moon as seen from Earth — cutting off radio contact for 40 minutes. The solar-powered mission then went on to witness a solar eclipse, experiencing totality for a full 50 minutes.
“As we prepare to go out of radio communication, we’re still going to feel your love from Earth,” said astronaut Victor Glover (Artemis 2 pilot) in a recent update. “And to all of you down there on Earth, we love you, from the Moon. We will see you on the other side.”
During the eclipse, the crew noted meteoroid flashes on the nighttime side of the Moon and watched as the pearly glow of the elusive solar corona peeked out around the lunar limb. (Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander witnessed a similar scene as a solar eclipse crossed its landing site in 2025.)
NASA
The crew also watched for a phenomenon known as lunar horizon glow, documented by the early Surveyor missions and witnessed by the crews of Apollo 15 and 17. The effect is thought to be due to sunlight filtering through small, charged dust particles elevated from the lunar surface by electrostatic fields.
What’s Next For Artemis 2
Now, Integrity and its crew are on their way home. They’ll arrive back on Friday, April 10th, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast from San Diego at 8:07 p.m. EDT (5:07 PDT). The USS John P. Murtha, a Navy ship, is onhand for recovery.
Next up in the Artemis program will be Artemis 3, which will launch in 2027 but stay in low-Earth orbit to test one or both landers from Blue Origin and SpaceX. If all goes according to plan, a landing on the Moon could happen with Artemis 4 as soon as 2028.
It’s great to see NASA back in the business of human exploration in deep space as the crew of Integrity returns to Earth.
