The Artemis II astronauts yesterday passed the halfway point between Earth and the moon as they sped toward a planned lunar flyby, with NASA releasing initial images of Earth taken from inside the Orion spacecraft.
Astronaut Christina Koch said the crew had a collective “expression of joy” upon being told of the milestone, which was hit about two days, five hours and 24 minutes after the spacecraft blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
“We can see the moon out of the docking hatch right now, it is a beautiful sight,” Koch said.
Photo: Reid Wiseman, EPA / NASA
NASA’s online dashboard showed that the Orion spacecraft carrying the astronauts was more than 229,000km from Earth.
After a flurry of high-stakes activity including a dramatic blast-off and an engine firing that catapulted them on their historic trajectory to circle the moon, the four astronauts aboard were able to catch their breath, even as they continued to perform a variety of equipment checks and tests.
“There has been a tremendous amount of disbelief for me, it’s just so extraordinary,” Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen said.
“I really like it up here,” said Hansen, on his first ever journey to space. “The views are extraordinary.”
“It’s really fun to be floating around” in zero gravity, he added. “It just makes me feel like a little kid.”
Hansen is on the crew with Americans Koch, Victor Glover and Reid Wiseman.
They are due to loop around the moon early next week — a feat not accomplished in more than 50 years.
“We continue to learn all about our spacecraft as we operate it in deep space with crew for the first time,” Hawkins said. “It’s important to remind ourselves of that as we learn a little bit more day by day.”
Friday’s to-do list includes a CPR demonstration and medical kit checks, as well as preparation for the scientific observations they would need to document when they are closest to the moon on day six of their journey, NASA said.
NASA officials said all systems were performing well, and that the astronauts were in “great spirits” and had spoken to their families.
The next major milestone of the approximately 10-day journey is expected overnight today into tomorrow, at which point the astronauts would enter the “lunar sphere of influence” — when the moon’s gravity would have stronger pull on the spacecraft than Earth’s.
If all proceeds smoothly, as Orion whips around the moon, the astronauts could set a record by venturing farther from Earth than any human before.
“There is nothing normal about this,” Wiseman said. “Sending four humans 250,000 miles away is a Herculean effort, and we are now just realizing the gravity of that.”
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