Artemis 2 best images here. Astronauts heading home

What’s Happening

So get this: The Artemis 2 spacecraft and its 4 astronauts reached the farthest distance from Earth ever traveled by humans and are now returning back home.

The post Artemis 2 best images here. Astronauts heading home first appeared on EarthSky. (it feels like chaos)

Science news, solid photos, sky alerts.

The Details

The Artemis 2 spacecraft and its four astronauts are finally heading home, following a historic day in human spaceflight yesterday. At around 18 UTC on , the crew reached the farthest distance from Earth ever traveled by humans, breaking the record of 248,655 miles (400,171km) set 13 crew in 1970.

And a few hours later, Artemis 2 began its voyage around the moons far side. As they soared some 4,600 miles (7,400 km) above the lunar surface, the brave astronauts had no contact with Earth for 40 minutes.

Why This Matters

This communications outage was expected, as they moon was blocking all signals between our planet and the spacecraft. It was during that time that the crew set the new distance record: 252,756 miles (406,771km), the greatest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth. They also became the first humans to see parts of the moons far side in daylight.

This could have implications for future research in this area.

Key Takeaways

• The unlit portions of the moon were interesting, too.
• And the Artemis 2 crew reported seeing at least four impact flashes from micrometeorites hitting the lunar surface!
• And the sights didnt end there for astronauts Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman and Jeremy Hansen.

The Bottom Line

No matter how long we look at this, our brains are not processing this image in front of us. It is absolutely spectacular, surreal Theres no adjectives.

What do you think about all this?