Source : Perth Now news
NASA astronauts who broke the record for furthest distance travelled from earth were greeted by a total solar eclipse and witnessed an “earthset” as they became the first to gaze by eye at parts of the elusive far side of the moon.
The Artemis II astronauts have beamed back more than 50 gigabytes’ worth of pictures and other data from their lunar rendezvous, which set a new distance record for humanity.
The highlight: an “earthset” photo reminiscent of Apollo 8’s earthrise shot from 1968.
Astronaut Christina Koch described being awestruck by not just the beauty of earth, “but how much blackness there was around it”.
“It just made it even more special. It truly emphasised how alike we are, how the same thing keeps every single person on planet earth alive,” she told the space station crew in Houston.
“The specialness and preciousness of that really is emphasised” when viewing the home planet from the moon, she added.
The first lunar explorers since Apollo 17 in 1972, Koch and the three other crew members are aiming for a splashdown off the San Diego coast on Friday night local time (Saturday morning AEST) to wrap up the nearly 10-day test flight.
It sets the stage for 2027’s Artemis III, a lunar lander docking demo in orbit around earth. Artemis IV will follow in 2028 with two astronauts attempting to land near the lunar south pole.
As for the Orion capsule’s pesky potty, mission control assured the astronauts that no maintenance was required.
The toilet has been on-and-off limits to the crew ever since last week’s launch, prompting them to rely on a backup bag-and-funnel system for urinating.
“We definitely have to fix some of the plumbing,” NASA administrator Jared Isaacman told the crew following their lunar flyby on Monday night.
Aside from the toilet and other relatively minor matters, the mission has gone well, Isaacman noted at a news conference on Tuesday.
“But I’ll breathe easier when we get through re-entry and everybody’s under chutes and in the water,” he said.
