After Americans declared independence on July 4, 1776, a waning gibbous moon rose in the night sky. To the people celebrating the birth of a new nation, it would have looked much the same as the moon we see today. But there was one subtle difference: 250 years ago, the moon was about 31 feet (9.4 meters) closer to Earth than it is now.

"The moon is currently drifting away from Earth at a rate of about 3.8 centimeters [1.5 inches] per year, which is coincidentally roughly the same speed at which human fingernails grow," says Seth McGowan, president of the Adirondack Sky Center & Observatory in Tupper Lake, New York.

That 31 feet may sound significant, but against the moon's average distance from Earth of 238,855 miles (384,400 km), it's effectively nothing. In fact, the moon's elliptical orbit causes its distance from Earth to vary by about 26,000 miles (43,000 km) every month as it moves between perigee, its closest point to Earth, and apogee, its farthest. "The tiny 31-foot shift over 250 years is entirely swallowed up by that massive monthly variance," says McGowan. But while the moon itself looked much as it does today, the world beneath it was very different.

How Americans used the moon in 1776

Colonial Americans depended on the moon in ways that are easy to forget in an age of electric light and digital clocks. Travelers planned journeys around how much moonlight would be available on a given night. Farmers and Indigenous peoples consulted lunar cycles to anticipate seasonal changes. Mariners tracked the moon's pull on the tides. Even military planners considered lunar illumination — during the Revolutionary War, a moonlit night could aid troop movement and navigation, but it could also expose an army's position to enemy forces. The moon helped people organize their activities in an era when daily life remained closely tied to the natural world.

One of the most popular publications of the colonial era was the almanac. Long before weather apps — or even standardized timekeeping — Americans turned to these annual guides for practical information about moon phases, moonrise and moonset times, eclipses, tides, and seasonal events. Publications such as Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanack" helped popularize the format decades before independence, while later titles, such as "The Old Farmer's Almanac," first published in 1792, continued the tradition.

What astronomers knew about the moon in 1776

By the time the Declaration of Independence was signed, astronomers already understood a surprising amount about Earth's nearest neighbor. More than 160 years earlier, Galileo's telescopic observations had revealed mountains, valleys, and craters on the lunar surface, overturning the ancient notion that heavenly bodies were perfect spheres. Isaac Newton's laws of motion and gravitation had since explained why the moon orbited Earth and why tides occurred.

While astronomers could predict eclipses and chart the moon's movements with impressive accuracy, they had never seen the moon's far side, had no idea how it formed, and couldn't say with confidence what it was made of. All of that would come centuries later — and there are still many lunar unknowns today.

How Apollo astronauts revealed the moon's slow escape

During the Apollo missions, we learned an extraordinary amount of new information about the moon, including the rate at which it's moving away from Earth. Apollo astronauts installed retroreflectors — special mirrors designed to bounce light directly back toward its source—on the lunar surface. Scientists then fired lasers at those reflectors to measure how long it takes the light to return, allowing them to calculate the Earth-moon distance with extraordinary precision. (Fun fact: We continue to use the retroreflectors today!) Those measurements revealed that the moon is receding from Earth at about 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) per year.

"The moon's gravity pulls on Earth's oceans, creating a tidal bulge," says McGowan. "Because Earth rotates faster than the moon orbits us, that ocean bulge pulls slightly ahead of the moon, acting like a cosmic gravitational leash that accelerates the moon into a higher, wider orbit. In doing so, the Earth's rotation slows ever so slightly — about 2.3 milliseconds per century. "Back in 1776, a day on Earth was about 5.75 milliseconds shorter than it is now," says McGowan.

This effect is imperceptible on human timescales, but over millions of years, it will have dramatic consequences. Eventually, the moon will appear too small in Earth's sky to completely cover the sun, ending the era of total solar eclipses and leaving only annular, or "ring of fire," eclipses in their place. The moon will never completely free itself from Earth, though — physics dictates that the drift will stop after about 15 billion years. And well before that, in about 5 billion years, the sun will expand into a red giant, consuming both the Earth and the moon entirely.

A lot has changed since NASA last sent astronauts to the moon — including the attitudes of those space explorers.

That's the view of Victor Glover, the NASA astronaut who served as pilot on the Artemis 2 mission around the moon's far side this past April.

"When you look back on the Apollo missions, there was a lot more competition back in the office. Everybody wanted to be the first, and then everybody wanted to be the next," Glover told Angels Broadcast Television on June 12, shortly before he threw out the first pitch before a baseball game between the Los Angeles Angels and the Tampa Bay Rays.

"I think our office learned a lot from them," he added. "There are some good things about that. It makes you work really hard, but it also can create some unnecessary conflict. And so my office really wants to support everybody — wants you to be the guy that does it, and somebody just gets picked to do it, and that's OK."

Glover and his Artemis 2 crewmates — NASA's Reid Wiseman and Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency — did indeed seem to forge a very strong bond during their training and their time in space.

For example, shortly before Artemis 2's April 1 launch, Glover, Koch and Hansen came up with a plan to name a crater on the moon after Wiseman's wife Carroll, who died of cancer in 2020.

"They said the three of them had talked, and they would like to do this," Wiseman said on April 6, the day Artemis 2 looped around the moon and got farther from Earth than any crewed mission ever had. "That was an emotional moment for me. And I just thought that was just a total treasure, that they had thought through this, and they had offered this."

Wiseman, Artemis 2's commander, said he broke down when Hansen radioed mission control with the naming request. In fact, all four astronauts were overcome with emotion at that moment.

"That was, I think, where the four of us were the most forged, the most bonded, and we came out of that really focused on that day ahead," Wiseman said.

The atmosphere was a bit different during the 1960s and early 1970s, as Glover noted; undercurrents of competition and rivalry reportedly ran through the Apollo crews.

For example, multiple people, including Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan, have said that Buzz Aldrin lobbied to be the first person to set foot on the moon, an honor that eventually went to Apollo 11 crewmate Neil Armstrong. (Aldrin has disputed this version of events, saying he didn't want to be the first-ever moonwalker.)

There are other big differences between Artemis and Apollo, of course. Apollo was designed to get people to the moon before the Soviet Union could do so, a goal that was regarded as a national security imperative because it would demonstrate American technological supremacy. As a result of this need for speed, Apollo did not build anything permanent on the moon, leaving behind only flags, footprints and defunct spacecraft.

Artemis, on the other hand, aims to establish a permanent and sustainable presence on Earth's nearest neighbor. If all goes to plan, NASA will build one or more moon bases near the lunar south pole, then use the skills and knowledge gained from this endeavor to get astronauts even farther afield — to Mars.

The Artemis generation has to deal with conspiracy theorists, too.

The four astronauts of NASA's Artemis 2 mission were accosted on Capitol Hill earlier this month by an aggressive man, who accused them of faking their moon mission.

"Stop lying! Stop acting! You all never went to space," the man said from just a few feet away during the incident, which was recorded on video. "Follow Jesus! God's watching you all."

It was reminiscent of Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin's encounter with the moon-landing denier Bart Sibrel in September 2002. Aldrin, who was 72 at the time, punched Sibrel in the face.

The Artemis 2 crew — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency — showed much more restraint.

They mostly ignored their accuser, though Glover did give him a slight wave and a smile. "Take care," the Artemis 2 pilot said as he walked away.

Artemis 2 launched on April 1, sending the quartet on a 10-day loop around the moon and back to Earth. It was the first crewed flight beyond Earth orbit since Apollo 17 put astronauts on the lunar surface in December 1972.

It takes some mental gymnastics to believe that this highly anticipated, incredibly well-documented mission was a hoax. NASA livestreamed the entire thing, from liftoff to splashdown, and thousands of people watched the launch in person on Florida's Space Coast.

Denying the reality of the Apollo moon missions is just as silly. Robotic moon orbiters have spotted the Apollo landing sites on the lunar surface. And, if you think that's all part of the same psy-op: Scientists still bounce lasers off reflectors that the Apollo astronauts implanted in the gray dirt, using the data to calculate the distance between Earth and the moon with incredible precision.

In addition, the United States' Cold War rival, the Soviet Union, was capable of tracking the Apollo spacecraft through the final frontier. If those craft didn't make it to the moon as advertised, the Soviets certainly would have called out the deception.

There's also the small matter of keeping the thousands of people involved in the Apollo "hoax" quiet — surely at least one of them would have blown the whistle to get a book or movie deal?

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Defense released what it termed "new, never-before-seen files" on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), tagging it as a historic effort in transparency.

The UAP release came courtesy of the Trump administration's Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, or PURSUE for short.

The posting involves 158 files — documents, photos and videos from NASA, the FBI, Defense Department, and State Department. Additional files are forthcoming, to be issued by the Department of Defense (DoD) "on a rolling basis." In a press statement, DoD Secretary Pete Hegseth remarked that his department is in lockstep with President Trump to bring unparalleled transparency regarding the government's understanding of UAP.

"These files, hidden behind classifications, have long fueled justified speculation — and it's time the American people see it for themselves," Hegseth said.

But just what are we seeing here? Space.com reached out to specialists to unravel what's behind sightings of UAP — or, as they used to be known, unidentified flying objects (UFOs).

'A useful beginning'

For some, there is a "so what" — maybe a ho-hum — reaction to the UAP data release. Those familiar with UFO records, documents, or even astronaut sightings note that almost all of the "never-before-seen" files have long been known.

"I would view this first tranche as a useful beginning in what I hope becomes regular releases of documents not previously available, well documented sighting investigations and videos that aren't stripped of all necessary information," said Mark Rodeghier, president and scientific director of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies.

Many of the FBI and other government files were already available, Rodeghier said, but fewer redactions and centralized access are still valuable.

"They allow researchers to check details more carefully and better reconstruct how official agencies received, evaluated and sometimes simply filed away UFO reports," Rodeghier added.

"Short videos and unresolved case summaries can be intriguing, but without the supporting metadata, investigative history and analysis, they are hard to evaluate," he said. "The real test will be whether future tranches provide complete case files, not just provocative fragments. True transparency means context, not just clips."

Similar in view is Robert Powell, an executive board member of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies.

"Recent government UAP disclosures have been valuable. They have confirmed that the public and the media regard this phenomenon as a matter of genuine importance," Powell said.

"But redacted files and the absence of credible scientific evaluation are not answers. They are a mandate," said Powell. "Academia and the scientific community can no longer afford to leave this field to institutions that operate in secrecy. The science of UAP must be conducted in the open, by those whose obligation is to the scientific evidence," he said.

More questions than answers

Also taking on "does it matter and who cares" is Alejandro Rojas, a consultant for Enigma Labs, a group appraising UAP via the use of cutting-edge technology and social intelligence.

"The UAP transparency movement didn't start with this administration," said Rojas. "It's been building in Congress for several years, driven by bipartisan oversight and persistent public pressure. What we're seeing now is the continuation of that effort, not the origin of it," he said.

As for the recent DoD release, "it feels somewhat unfinished," Rojas said. "There are many cases with minimal context, missing sensor data, and little accompanying analysis, as if the priority was getting something out the door rather than something useful."

But imperfect data released publicly, Rojas added, is still more valuable than perfect data sitting in a vault. "Even a messy dataset reveals patterns over time, and every case added to the public record is one more data point researchers and citizens can work with. The question is what comes next, because this release raises more questions than it answers," he said.

Missing: context and data

On the lack of context and data, Rojas said that, for any meaningful scientific analysis, you need more than a grainy infrared clip and a one-paragraph summary.

"These reports are largely missing the basics — coordinates, sensor parameters, altitude, speed confirmation. Many cases appear to have been flagged as UAP simply because there wasn't enough data to identify them, rather than because they exhibited genuinely anomalous behavior," said Rojas.

"That's not a criticism of the release," he added, "it's just the reality of what we're working with. Real analysis requires real data, and hopefully future releases include more of it."

Enigma Labs has built a website offering anyone  — researchers, journalists, curious members of the public  — the opportunity to search and explore these files as they come out, rather than hunting through a government portal.

"We're also collecting public sighting reports and giving people a community to discuss and analyze what's being released," Rojas added. "The goal is to make this process as open and accessible as possible, because transparency only works if people can actually find and use the information."

Real and inexplicable phenomena

For the first time in history, the White House and a number of government agencies "have acknowledged that there is a real and inexplicable phenomena occurring on a global basis that demands attention," said Michael Gold, president of Redwire Space, a space and defense company focused on advanced technologies.

Gold has experience delving into uncanny oddness in the skies. He served on NASA's UAP Independent Study Team that ran from 2022 to 2023. He said he's particularly grateful that the DoD (which the Trump administration has unofficially rebranded the Department of War) and NASA acknowledged that the object in the Apollo 17 imagery was real and unknown.

"The most powerful words in science are 'I don't know,' and I appreciate NASA and the Department of War being modest enough to acknowledge when a good explanation doesn't currently exist," said Gold. "Acknowledging anomalies is the first step to discovery, and is how scientific progress is made."

Gold emphasized that it's important to acknowledge the unprecedented nature of the White House's treatment of UAP. "I would like to compare the White House release to similar actions by prior administrations, but I can't, since there are none," he said.

The Trump administration and the agencies involved, Gold said, "should be applauded for supporting transparency despite what I'm certain were incredible and historic challenges to not just releasing information, but even just treating the UAP issue with the seriousness that it deserves."

Beginning, not an ending

In his 2024 testimony before Congress, Gold urged NASA to conduct a review of its archives for UAP.

"Another recommendation I made to Congress and supported by the NASA UAP Independent Study Team was for UAP to be added to NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System [ASRS]," said Gold.

ASRS provides the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration with confidential data relative to safety anomalies. ASRS has provided the federal government with hundreds of thousands of confidential reports and has successfully operated for years, Gold said.

If UAP were added to the anomalies that ASRS collects, Gold said, every commercial pilot, crew member, and even passengers could act as sensors for UAP, providing a treasure trove of data.

"I hope that more files will be released soon that will show even more definitively anomalous behavior," Gold concluded. "I expect we are at the beginning, not an ending, of a very important moment in the history of science."

The Apollo photos really shouldn't have been part of the big UFO drop.

Last Friday (May 8), the Pentagon released its first batch of declassified "UFO files," responding to a directive that President Donald Trump issued in February.

Many of the 158 files focus on recent sightings by advanced U.S. military sensors — a "misshapen and uneven ball of white light" flying over Syria in October 2024, for example, and a small, bright dot cruising through a field of windmills in that same year. But some of them go back decades — all the way to the 1940s in several cases. (There has apparently been a slight cull or consolidation in the past week; there were 161 files when the drop was first announced.)

The older material includes 14 files related to NASA's human spaceflight programs — two from the Gemini 7 mission to Earth orbit in December 1965, one from Apollo 11 in July 1969, six from Apollo 12 in November of that year, four from Apollo 17 in December 1972 and one from crewed flights to the Skylab space station in 1973 and 1974.

The Apollo 11 file is a "technical crew debriefing," in which astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins discuss a few strange things that they saw and experienced during their historic mission. Aldrin, for example, states that he saw "what I thought were little flashes inside the cabin" — a phenomenon that he attributes to "some sort of penetration" or perhaps static electricity.

There are crew debriefings from Apollo 17 and Skylab, too, as well as other transcripts and/or audio excerpts from Gemini 7, Apollo 12 and Apollo 17. The UFO file drop also features photos captured on the lunar surface during those latter two missions, with the Pentagon highlighting supposedly mysterious features.

For example, one Apollo 17 photo "contains three 'dots' in a triangular formation in the lower right quadrant of the lunar sky that is clearly visible upon magnification of the image," its description reads. Another, captured during Apollo 12, "features five highlighted areas of interest, labeled 'Area 1' through 'Area 5,' above the horizon, in which unidentified phenomena are visible."

These photos and transcripts got a lot of attention shortly after last Friday's drop, with outlets like CBS News and Fortune discussing the material. Some of these stories used verbs like "reveal," which is a bit misleading, because this old NASA material has been publicly available for decades.

A number of folks have pointed this out. "Every single image released today from Apollo has simply added yellow boxes to images that have otherwise been public for half a century," astrophysicist Grant Tremblay noted on X on May 8.

"I am making no comment on aliens or UAP here, and am happy to see the release. But a bunch of serious people are suggesting that the Apollo stuff is 'newly declassified,' and that is simply not true," he added in another X post on that same day. (UAP, short for "unidentified anomalous phenomena," is the U.S. government's preferred term for UFOs these days.)

In a May 9 X post, Tremblay guided followers to the Project Apollo Archive on Flickr, inviting them to see the photos in bulk there. Such a perusal will reveal that many Apollo images sport "film defects," he added, highlighting a likely cause of the lunar "UFOs."

Graphic designer Jason Major, a space fan and veteran processor of space imagery, made a similar point.

"This is dumb. There are blue spots, specks, scratches, flares, and bits of crud in almost ALL of the Apollo photos. They were TAKEN WITH FILM CAMERAS IN SPACE — not to mention chemically developed and then scanned by various methods over the course of six decades," Major wrote in a May 8 X post about the Pentagon UFO-file drop.

This isn't to say that you should ignore the files or dismiss folks who are interested in them; some UAP observations are genuinely mysterious, and keeping an open mind is generally a good thing.

But keep a little perspective, too, and know that people have been poring over the Apollo material for longer than most of us have been alive.

I've been imagining what it would be like to go to the Moon ever since 1961 when I was five years old, staring at the artists' conceptions in my childhood space books. When Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders became the first humans to actually go there, during Christmas week of 1968, I was a 12-year-old space fanatic camped out in front of the TV with models of the spacecraft I'd built from kits, maps of the Moon, and articles about the flight — my own personal mission control.

For me, the highlight of the 20 hours Apollo 8 spent in lunar orbit on Christmas Eve came when Borman and his crew made two TV broadcasts with their small onboard black-and-white camera. I was absolutely mesmerized by the images of craters gliding slowly past the spacecraft's windows. I loved their fuzzy, almost dreamlike quality; somehow that fit the momentousness of the event and the almost unimaginable distance between the three Moon voyagers and all of us on their home planet.

This was nothing less than the most exciting thing I could possibly imagine. I wanted to be those men, and over the next four years I took my place in front of the TV for every one of the Apollo missions, right up through the end of the program in December 1972. Witnessing humanity's first voyages to another world became my life's defining experience. I couldn't have imagined then that I would grow up to become a space historian and that I would spend eight years writing a you-are-there account of the lunar missions, based on my in-depth interviews with the Apollo Moon voyagers. But even as I re-immersed myself in Apollo, I had to face the reality that the first era of human lunar exploration was receding ever further into history, with nothing on the horizon to replace it. Since then there has always been a part of me drawing sustenance from the distant past, especially when I began teaching the lessons of Apollo to NASA engineers in 2016.

As the time for Artemis 2 drew near, my anticipation was mixed with uncertainty. Would this new Moon mission spark the feelings of wonder and excitement I'd had so long ago? Those doubts didn't last long. When astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen headed for the Moon in the Orion spacecraft they named "Integrity," I felt like parts of my brain that had been dormant since 1972 were being reactivated. I listened to every minute of their seven-hour lunar flyby — but this was nothing like the Christmas Eve I'd experienced more than 57 years before. Now NASA's coverage featured extended views from inside the cabin while the astronauts worked, so clear that they could have been aboard the International Space Station 250 miles (400 kilometers) up instead of a thousand times farther away.

As I listened to the astronauts' voices, I felt as if a veil had been lifted: Instead of the restrained, "Right Stuff" delivery of the Apollo 8 crew's transmissions, I heard expressions of exhilaration and even joy. And I was amazed at the richness of detail about the lunar experience that was available to everyone in real time. Even the astronauts' geologic descriptions were filled with human moments that put me in the spacecraft alongside them. As "Integrity" rounded the Moon, Christina Koch likened the appearance of the smallest, freshest lunar craters to "a lampshade with tiny pinprick holes and the light shining through. They're so bright compared to the rest of the Moon." Victor Glover described peering at the long shadows of the lunar terminator through a telephoto lens and suddenly feeling transported down to that airless, forbidding landscape and imagining himself off-road driving among jagged peaks.

For me, the most awesome moment of the entire mission happened when "Integrity" flew into the Moon's shadow, creating a nearly hour-long total eclipse of the Sun — more than 10 times longer than most total eclipses visible from Earth. I was transfixed by video from the spacecraft's external cameras showing the glow of the solar corona slowly disappearing behind the Moon's darkened limb. Aboard "Integrity," the astronauts let their eyes adapt, and soon they could see the Moon's night side set against a dim glow, with a crescent-shaped slice of the cratered globe illuminated in the soft light of Earthshine. I heard Victor Glover say, "We've just gone sci-fi." Suddenly I was filled with curiosity, hungry for more description.

But this was one sight that was beyond their ability to convey in the moment. "It's just, it's indescribable," I heard Reid Wiseman say. "No matter how long we look at this, our brains are not processing this image in front of us. It is absolutely spectacular. Surreal. There's — I know there's no adjectives. I'm gonna need to invent some new ones to describe what we are looking at out this window."

The morning after the flyby, I opened my laptop to find that the astronauts had beamed down their photos of the encounter, and I felt like Rip Van Winkle awakened from a half-century nap. For decades after Apollo, there was no such thing as hi-def scans of the missions' photographic film, but now, just hours after the event, I was looking at full-resolution digital images of stunning beauty, including new portraits of a brilliant blue and white crescent Earth setting and then rising behind the lunar far side's lifeless expanse, taken from the farthest point in deep space that humans have ever reached. I felt a wave of excitement and relief come over me at the realization that a new era of human deep space exploration has finally begun. Now, instead of just looking back, I'm looking ahead.

Andrew Chaikin is the author of "A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts" (Viking, 1994). His website is www.DoSpaceBetter.com.

HOUSTON — The crew of NASA's Artemis 2 mission around the moon is back on Earth — and now back home, here in Houston.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and the Canadian Space Agency's Jermey Hansen landed Saturday (April 11) at Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base, a short drive down the road from NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC).

The crew just completed a 10-day mission around the moon aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft, splashing down Friday evening (April 10) off the coast of San Diego. It was the first mission to the moon in over half a century, and the astronauts' journey captivated the world through breathtaking imagery and the profound, often emotional human moments they experienced in space.

Wiseman, Glover, Koch and Hansen flew into Houston, landing at Ellington Field around 3:45 p.m. EDT (1945 GMT) on Saturday. It was the last in a string of vehicles that ultimately ferried the crew from the splashdown site back home to NASA's mission control and astronaut training facilities at JSC.

Artemis 2 launched atop NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on April 1. Their mission flew them first into Earth orbit, then on a dramatic flyby around the far side of the moon, which broke the record for the farthest any astronaut has flown from Earth. The lunar flyby took just one of the crew's roughly 10 days in space; the rest were spent traversing the vast distance between our home planet and its natural satellite.

After landing at Ellington Field, the crew reunited privately with their families before joining a hangar full of friends, loved ones, NASA colleagues and journalists. The four astronauts were greeted with applause as NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman brought them on stage to say a few words.

Wiseman, the Artemis 2 commander, spoke first.

"Victor, Christina and Jeremy, we are bonded forever," he said, calling their shared experience "the most special thing that will ever happen in my life."

"Being 200,000-plus miles away from home — before you launch, it feels like it's the greatest dream on Earth. And when you're out there, you just want to get back to your families and your friends," Wiseman said. "It's a special thing to be a human, and it's a special thing to be on planet Earth."

Glover went next, stressing how tough it is to put the experience into words.

"I'm going to keep it brief, because I don't … I'm afraid to start talking," he said. "I have not processed what we just did, and I'm afraid to start even trying."

"Even bigger than my challenge trying to describe what we went through [is] the gratitude of seeing what we saw, doing what we did, and being with who I was with. It's too big to just be in one body," Glover said.

Koch went next. She used her time to reflect on an answer she gave several years ago when asked the difference between a team and a crew.

"A crew is … a group that is in it all the time, no matter what, that is stroking together every minute, with the same purpose, that is willing to sacrifice silently for each other, that gives grace, that holds accountable. A crew has the same cares and the same needs, and a crew is inescapably, beautifully, dutifully linked," Koch said.

"When we saw tiny Earth, people asked our crew what impressions we had. And honestly, what struck me wasn't necessarily just Earth — it was all the blackness around it," she continued. "Earth was just this lifeboat hanging undisturbingly in the universe."

"I know I haven't learned everything that this journey has yet to teach me, but there's one new thing I know, and that is, Planet Earth, you are a crew," Koch said to the gathered crowd, speaking to all of humanity.

Hansen spoke last, and added some humor to the event.

"Well, it's been a lot. This isn't helping," he said of his crewmates' emotional remarks. "This is the furthest I've been away from Reid in a long time," Hansen joked, looking across the stage at Wiseman.

(Orion's interior is about the same size as that of two minivans, so the astronauts were in very close quarters during their time in space.)

Wiseman then stood up and crossed the stage to sit in Hansen's chair as he continued speaking. Then, in what turned out to be a heartwarming gesture, with Hansen standing next to him, Wiseman put his hand lightly on his crewmate's shin.

"I'll start with gratitude — gratitude for my family, gratitude for NASA, for its leadership, gratitude for the Canadian Space Agency," Hansen said. "I don't think people will really ever fully comprehend how well supported and trained we were. It is almost unbelievable."

Artemis 2 has come home, but NASA still has its nose to the lunar grindstone.

The four astronauts of Artemis 2, the first crewed mission to the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972, splashed down safely off the coast of San Diego last night (April 10).

It was a big moment for NASA, but the agency doesn't plan to rest on its laurels. The agency has even more ambitious plans in the years ahead — including putting boots down on the moon just a couple of years from now.

Artemis 2 launched on April 1, sending four astronauts — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency — on a 10-day trip around the moon.

It was the first crewed mission of the Artemis program and the second overall, after Artemis 1, which launched an uncrewed Orion capsule to lunar orbit and back to Earth in late 2022.

The next mission, Artemis 3, was originally supposed to be a crewed trip to the lunar surface. But in late February, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced a big change to the Artemis architecture. Artemis 3 will now stay in Earth orbit, testing Orion's ability to dock with one or both of the program's crewed lunar landers — SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon.

NASA wants to launch that mission in mid-2027. If all goes well, Artemis 4 will then put astronauts down near the moon's south pole, using Orion and one of the privately developed Human Landing System (HLS) vehicles, in late 2028.

Things will only get more exciting from there. The crewed Artemis missions will keep coming, helping to establish a lunar base by 2032. Astronauts will live and work at this outpost for a long time after that, teaching NASA the skills and techniques it needs to make the next giant leap — to Mars.

That's the plan, anyway. And there is some reason to hope it could actually happen. Artemis 1 and Artemis 2 were successful, after all, and the ball is already rolling on Artemis 3.

During an Artemis 2 press conference on Tuesday (April 7), for example, Isaacman revealed that agency officials had held "the first senior-level Artemis 3 mission design discussion" that very day.

"There are a lot of things, based on the information we have available today, from feedback from our vendors, that we know are achievable," he added a bit later in the briefing. "And I think one of the questions probably will just be, what the initial orbit will be for Artemis 3."

The options are low Earth orbit (LEO) and high Earth orbit for the mission, which will be crewed.

"There's pros and cons for each of them," Isaacman said. "We're all going to be able to have some sense about which path we will likely go down based on launch cadence of our two HLS providers."

And teams have already made significant progress on the Artemis 3 hardware, according to NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya. Some pieces of that mission's Space Launch System rocket are already at the launch site, Kennedy Space Center in Florida, he said. And others will ship out from the agency's Michoud Assembly Facility in Louisana later this month.

"So we're, yes, in earnest, proceeding as quickly as we can," Kshatriya told reporters on Thursday (April 9).

And we can expect to learn the identities of the Artemis 3 astronauts "soon," he added during a post-splashdown news conference on Friday evening.

"I will not put units on that value," Kshatriya said. "But soon."

There are still some big hurdles to overcome, of course. For example, both HLS landers are unproven.

Blue Moon hasn't flown at all yet. Starship has launched on 11 suborbital test flights to date, the last two of them fully successful. But the giant vehicle still hasn't reached orbit, demonstrated off-Earth refueling (which it will need to do on moon or Mars missions) or been outfitted with a life-support system.

There are also some kinks to work out with Orion going forward. For instance, Integrity's propulsion system sprang a helium leak during Artemis 2. (Orion's service module uses helium to push propellant from its tanks into the engines.)

The observed leak rate is "still acceptable, but that will lead us to probably an extensive redesign of that valve system," Kshatriya said on Thursday. "I don't need those valves to hold pressure in the same way for a LEO orbiting mission, but for a lunar orbit mission, I do."

Integrity's toilet acted up a bit during Artemis 2, so engineers may need to make a few tweaks to that system as well.

Other issues will doubtless crop up as the Artemis missions proceed toward the program's audacious goal. Humanity has never built an outpost on a world beyond Earth before, after all, so achieving that grand vision will be a heavy lift.

But Isaacman is confident that NASA is up to the challenge, pointing to the success of Artemis 2 as evidence.

"This is just the beginning," he said just after the mission's splashdown on Friday. "We are going to get back into doing this with frequency, sending missions to the moon, until we land on it in 2028 and start building our base."

Artemis 2 has come home.

The four Artemis 2 astronauts splashed down off the coast of San Diego this evening (April 10), wrapping up an epic mission that broke spaceflight records, caught the attention of the world and set the stage for even more ambitious moonshots to come.

"From the pages of Jules Verne to a modern-day mission to the moon, a new chapter of the exploration of our celestial neighbor is complete. Integrity's astronauts are back on Earth," NASA spokesperson Rob Navias said just after splashdown, referring to the name of Artemis 2's Orion capsule.

A mission of firsts

Artemis 2 launched on April 1, sending four explorers — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen — toward the moon inside Integrity.

It was the second-ever liftoff for NASA's huge Space Launch System rocket and the first crewed flight for both SLS and Orion.

Artemis 2 was a mission of firsts in many other ways as well. For starters, it launched humanity back to the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in December 1972. Glover was the first person of color ever to leave Earth orbit, and Koch and Hansen were the first woman and first non-American, respectively, to do so. (The Apollo astronauts had been the only people to achieve this feat, and they were all white American men.)

"We sent four amazing people to the moon and safely returned them to Earth for the first time in more than 50 years," Lori Glaze, NASA's Artemis program manager, said after the splashdown. "To the generation that now knows what we're capable of, 'Welcome to our moonshot.'"

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who watched the Artemis 2 astronauts return to Earth from the deck of their recovery ship, the USS John P. Murtha, seemed in awe of the entire mission.

"Honestly, I'm still at a loss for words," Isaacman said after splashdown during NASA's televised commentary. "The childhood Jared, right now, can't believe what I just saw. I mean, I've almost been waiting my whole lifetime to see to see this, and then it's as NASA administrator. I just couldn't be more proud of the entire workforce, the years, the effort, the late nights, all the hard work from across the country that contributed to this incredible moment right now."

Artemis 2 also took a unique path to Earth's nearest neighbor — a "free-return" trajectory that featured a single loop around the far side. The Apollo moon missions, by contrast, targeted lunar orbit, after which some of them touched down on the gray dirt.

Apollo 13 ended up flying a free-return trajectory in April 1970, but that wasn't by design; that mission was supposed to orbit and then land on the moon, but it suffered an explosion en route that scuttled that plan and forced its astronauts into survival mode.

Apollo 13's unplanned lunar loop sent it 248,655 miles (400,171 kilometers) from Earth, farther than any humans had ever gone before. Artemis 2 broke that record during its own flyby on Monday (April 6), which took the crewmates 252,756 miles (406,771 km) from their home planet. (From liftoff to landing, the Artemis 2 crew flew a total of 700,237 miles, or 1.1 million km.)

They don't want to hold this record for half a century, though, for that would signal a disappointing stagnation in human spaceflight.

"We, most importantly, choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived," Hansen said shortly after Artemis 2 surpassed Apollo 13.

The Apollo capsules held a maximum of three astronauts. So Artemis 2 was the first mission to fly four people to deep space, as well as the first to send a bona fide toilet beyond Earth orbit. Artemis 2's space toilet had some issues, but it was still a giant leap for deep-space hygiene; the Apollo astronauts did their business into handheld bags.

The moon up close — and a solar eclipse, too!

But Artemis 2 wasn't about setting records. It was primarily a shakeout cruise, designed to show that SLS and Orion can fly crewed missions beyond Earth orbit.

There were some science objectives, too. After all, the Artemis 2 astronauts were getting humanity's first up-close looks at the moon in more than 50 years.

And their free-return trajectory, which featured a lunar close-approach distance of 4,067 miles (6,545 km), gave them different, more zoomed-out views than those of the Apollo astronauts, who mostly observed the moon from a tight orbit. Indeed, during their flyby, the Artemis 2 astronauts saw parts of the far side never before seen with human eyes, which are incredibly capable instruments.

"Human eyes and brains are highly sensitive to subtle changes in color, texture and other surface characteristics," NASA officials wrote in an Artemis 2 explainer.

"Having astronaut eyes observe the lunar surface directly, in combination with the context of all the advances that scientists have made about the moon over the last several decades, may uncover new discoveries and a more nuanced appreciation for the features on the surface of the moon," they added.

So NASA scientists prepped the Artemis 2 crewmates extensively, giving them a long list of viewing targets and instructions on how to observe them.

One of the highest-priority landforms was Orientale Basin. This 600-mile-wide (965 km) crater, known as the "Grand Canyon of the moon," had never been seen in sunlight before, so the science team was keen to get Artemis 2's eyes on it.

The astronauts obliged, returning detailed observations of Orientale. They reported back effusively about many other features as well. Glover, for example, was particularly taken with the terminator, the boundary between day and night on the moon.

"There's just so much magic in the terminator — the islands of light, the valleys that look like black holes; you'd fall straight to the center of the moon if you stepped in some of those," he radioed to Mission Control during the flyby. "It's just so visually captivating." The crew reported seeing colors on the moon as well, describing some regions as green and brown.

The Artemis 2 astronauts also got to see a total solar eclipse during Monday's flyby, a happy accident of orbital dynamics locked in by the fact that they launched on April 1. (The eclipse wasn't visible to us here on Earth.)

Because the moon loomed so large in Artemis 2's view, it blocked the sun for a whopping 54 minutes — far longer than totality lasts during solar eclipses seen from Earth.

The astronauts dutifully recorded details of the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, during the epic event. But they took some time to appreciate it on an emotional level as well.

"When that actually happened, it just blew us all away," Glover said in a call with reporters on Wednesday (April 8). He called it "unreal" when he watched it in real-time.

There were many such human moments on this mission, and we got to see them thanks to NASA's 24/7 livestream. For instance, just after Artemis 2 broke Apollo 13's distance record, Hansen radioed Mission Control asking for permission to name two heretofore anonymous craters on the moon — one after Integrity and one after Wiseman's late wife Carroll, who died of cancer in 2020.

As Hansen made the case for Carroll Crater, his crewmates fought off tears, without much success.

"For me personally, that was kind of the pinnacle moment of the mission," Wiseman said in Wednesday's call. "That was, I think, where the four of us were the most forged, the most bonded, and we came out of that really focused on that day ahead."

Mission Control agreed to both name proposals, by the way, though they won't get onto official moon maps until the International Astronomical Union gives the thumbs-up as well.

Coming home

Monday's lunar flyby did more than break a spaceflight record and enable unprecedented science observations; it also charted Integrity's course back to Earth. Indeed, that was the main reason NASA picked the free-return trajectory for Artemis 2: Relying on lunar gravity to send Orion home eliminated the need for a major engine burn, reducing risks for this test mission.

So there wasn't a lot of drama over the past few days as Integrity made its way back toward Earth. But that was just as well, for today's homecoming had plenty of drama — and a fair bit of danger.

Spacecraft returning from the moon hit Earth's atmosphere at tremendous speeds — 24,000 mph (38,600 kph) or thereabouts. This generates huge amounts of frictional heating; temperatures around the vehicle can hit 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,800 degrees Celsius).

Orion has a heat shield to deal with such temperatures — the biggest one ever built for crewed flight, in fact, at 16.5 feet (5 meters) wide. But that heat shield showed some cracks on the lone previous Artemis mission — Artemis 1, which successfully sent an uncrewed Orion to lunar orbit and back in late 2022.

Because of that unexpected damage, NASA tweaked Artemis 2's reentry profile, bringing Integrity in on a steeper angle to limit the amount of time its heat shield was exposed to extreme conditions in the atmosphere. But the agency didn't modify the heat shield itself, stressing that the hardware was up to the challenge.

Still, when Orion hit the Earth's atmosphere and went radio silent for six minutes due to the interference from plasma during descent, there was some nervousness in Mission Control.

"Certainly, there's anxiety," Artemis 2 entry flight director Rick Henfling said after splashdown in a press conference. "If you didn't have anxiety bringing the spacecraft home, you probably didn't have a pulse."

But he and his team had extreme confidence in Orion's heat shield and performance, as did the rest of Mission Control and the astronauts themselves.

That confidence was well placed, for Integrity survived its trial by fire today. The capsule hit the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean southeast of Hawaii at 7:53 p.m. (2353 GMT). Ten minutes later, the capsule's drogue parachutes deployed as planned, followed in short succession by its three big main chutes.

The mains helped slow Integrity's descent to 19 mph (31 kph) — the speed it was traveling when it hit the water at 8:07 p.m. EDT (0007 GMT on April 11) off the coast of San Diego, about 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from the spot where it first slammed into the atmosphere.

"A perfect bulls-eye splashdown for Integrity and its four astronauts," Navias said. "It was, for all intents and purposes, a textbook mission."

The USS John P. Murtha, from Naval Base San Diego — was waiting in the area to welcome the astronauts home, and to get them to shore for medical checks. All four were reported to be in good health and good spirits.

Bigger things coming

Artemis 2 was a big deal, but it will lead to even more ambitious missions in the next few years, if all goes according to plan.

It's a step toward the chief goal of the Artemis program: establishing a crewed outpost near the moon's south pole by the early 2030s. This region is thought to be rich in water ice, which can be used for life support and also processed into rocket fuel. NASA believes that building such a base will help it map out an even grander project — landing astronauts on Mars, which the agency aims to do in the late 2030s or early 2040s.

With Artemis 2 in the books, NASA can now turn its attention to Artemis 3, which is scheduled to send astronauts to Earth orbit in mid-2027. They'll test docking procedures up there using Orion and one or both of the Artemis program's contracted lunar landers — SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon.

After that will come Artemis 4, which will use one of those privately developed vehicles to put astronauts down near the lunar south pole in late 2028. The timeline is aggressive by design: China aims to pull off its own crewed lunar landing by 2030, and the U.S. wants to win this new space race.

"The path to the lunar surface is open, but the work ahead is greater than the work behind us. It always will be," NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said in the briefing. "Fifty-three years ago, humanity left the moon. This time, we return to stay."

Editor's note: This story was updated at 12:30 a.m. ET on April 11 to include additional details and comments from NASA's post Artemis 2 splashdown briefing. Space.com Editor-in-Chief Tariq Malik contributed to this report.

UPDATE for 9 p.m. ET: NASA's Orion spacecraft has successfully returned to Earth to return its Artemis 2 astronauts to Earth. See video and photos of the Artemis 2 splashdown in our wrap story. See our LIVE Artemis 2 splashdown updates for more.

The Artemis 2 astronauts are almost home.

The quartet's Orion capsule will return to Earth tonight (April 10), bringing an end to the first crewed moon mission since Apollo 17 back in 1972. You can watch the splashdown live here on Space.com and follow all the action with our Artemis 2 live blog.

If all goes according to plan, the spacecraft will splash down at 8:07 p.m. EDT (0007 GMT on April 11) in the Pacific Ocean, not far off the coast of San Diego — the same general area where the uncrewed Artemis 1 moon mission came down in December 2022. And there are very good reasons why NASA keeps returning to this spot.

For starters, it's wet. And that's important, because Orion — like the Apollo capsules before it — is designed to splash down in the ocean, not land on terra firma.

And the waters off San Diego — as opposed to Los Angeles, say, or San Francisco — make a lot of sense, because the city hosts a pretty important naval installation.

"Naval Base San Diego is homeport to the Pacific Fleet Surface Navy, with 60 U.S. Navy ships and two auxiliary vessels," the base's official website states. "Naval Base San Diego is also home to more than 200 tenant commands, each having specific and specialized fleet support purposes."

That support is crucial to NASA, which coordinates its crew-recovery operations with the Navy. Indeed, the vessel that will pick up the four Artemis 2 astronauts (NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen) is the USS John Murtha, an amphibious transport dock ship that's homeported at Naval Base San Diego.

The seas off San Diego are also generally benign and well-understood, another important factor for a crewed mission's splashdown zone.

So, the area "is a practical choice: predictable Pacific recovery conditions, nearby naval support and a well-practiced handoff from capsule to ship," Aaron Rosengren, an expert in orbital mechanics at the University of California San Diego, told UC San Diego Today on Wednesday (April 8).

Artemis 2's "free-return trajectory," which sent it on a single, dramatic loop around the moon, "set the broad fact that Orion would come back to Earth in the Pacific," Rosengren said. The Artemis 2 team homed in on the San Diego area by making a few additional, precise engine burns, he added.

The last of those burns will occur today at 2:53 p.m. EDT (1853 GMT), if all goes according to plan. At 7:33 p.m. EDT (2333 GMT), Orion's crew module will separate from its service module, which has been providing power and propulsion throughout the 10-day mission.

Twenty minutes later, the crew module will hit Earth's atmosphere over the Pacific, about 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) southwest of San Diego. Orion will be traveling nearly 24,000 mph (38,620 kph) at that point, so it'll cover that ground pretty quickly; splashdown is expected at 8:07 p.m. EDT (0007 GMT).

The USS John Murtha will be in the area, waiting to welcome the four astronauts back to Earth — and to help them get to dry land safe and sound.

Just after they broke a 56-year-old spaceflight record, the Artemis 2 astronauts shared a powerful moment that deepened their already profound bond.

On Monday (April 6), Artemis 2 made it farther from Earth than any crewed mission ever had before, topping the mark set by NASA's Apollo 13 moon mission in April 1970 (248,655 miles, or 400,171 kilometers).

The astronauts marked the occasion by celebrating a lost loved one — Artemis 2 commander Reid Wiseman's late wife, Carroll Taylor Wiseman, who died of cancer in 2020. Mission specialist Jeremy Hansen radioed down to Mission Control, asking permission to name a moon crater after Carroll.

"There is a feature in a really neat place on the moon, and it is on the near side-far side boundary," Hansen said.

"In fact, it’s just on the near side of that boundary, and so at certain times of the moon's transit around Earth, we will be able to see this from Earth," he added. "It's a bright spot on the moon. And we would like to call it Carroll."

That beautiful moment had been in the works for more than a week, Wiseman revealed on Wednesday night (April 8) during a call that he and the other Artemis 2 astronauts — Hansen, Victor Glover and Christina Koch — held with reporters.

"My crewmates approached me when we were at Kennedy in quarantine," Wiseman said, referring to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the site from which Artemis 2 launched on April 1. (The astronauts arrived at KSC to prep for that liftoff on March 27.)

"They said the three of them had talked, and they would like to do this," he added. "That was an emotional moment for me. And I just thought that was just a total treasure, that they had thought through this, and they had offered this."

Wiseman gave them his approval. But he had one request.

"I can't give the speech," he said. "I can't give the talk. And Jeremy, the kind of guy he is, he said he would do it. And it was getting emotional there."

Wiseman said he really lost it when Hansen spelled out Carroll's name for Mission Control on Monday, to make sure the crater would be properly identified.

"I think for me, that's when I was overwhelmed with emotion," Wiseman said. "And I looked over and Christina was crying. I put my hand down on Jeremy's hand as he was still talking — it was right there on that rail — and I could just tell he was trembling, and we all pretty much broke down right there."

That was "the pinnacle moment of the mission" for him personally, Wiseman said.

"That was, I think, where the four of us were the most forged, the most bonded, and we came out of that really focused on that day ahead," he added.

And that was a very busy and remarkable day: The astronauts flew around the far side of the moon on Monday, seeing some areas that had never been viewed by human eyes before. They were also treated to a celestial marvel, witnessing a total solar eclipse from beyond the moon.

The flyby also charted the astronauts' journey home, as lunar gravity slingshotted their Orion capsule back toward Earth. The quartet will arrive here Friday evening (April 10), with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego.

The Artemis 2 astronauts were already close before Carroll Crater was a thing — far before launch, in fact. They were selected for the mission in April 2023, so they've been training together intensely for the past three years.

But their experiences off Earth have deepened and tightened those bonds, which extend beyond their Orion capsule to the entire mission team.

Koch, for example, was asked on Wednesday night what she will miss most about being in space after she comes home. This was her response:

"I will miss this camaraderie. I will miss being this close with this many people and having a common purpose, a common mission — getting to work on it hard every day, across hundreds of thousands of miles with a team on the ground. This sense of teamwork is something that you don't usually get as an adult. I mean, we are close, like brothers and sisters, and that is a privilege we will never have again."

The Artemis 2 crew also proposed naming a moon crater after their Orion capsule, which they christened "Integrity." Mission Control greenlit both suggestions, but that's not the end of the story. Before Carroll Crater and Integrity Crater can get added to official lunar maps, they must be approved by the International Astronomical Union.

The Artemis 2 astronauts' photography skills were up to the epic task.

The spaceflyers — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — flew around the far side of the moon on Monday (April 6), something no humans had done since NASA's Apollo 17 mission back in 1972.

The Artemis 2 quartet chronicled their historic journey in detail, capturing some photos that could help scientists better understand lunar geology and evolution, and others that seemed designed just to blow our minds. Here are a few of the most amazing ones.

Let's start with the above photo, which provides a new and mind-bending perspective on our home planet. Have you ever seen it like this, tiny and crescent-shaped, perched above a seemingly huge and dominant moon?

The Artemis 2 crew snapped that spectacular shot a little more than halfway into the flyby on Monday. It captures the moments before Earthset, when our home planet disappeared behind the lunar limb from the astronauts' perspective. (The photo at the top of this story is also an Earthset shot.)

This flyby photo highlights the Orientale Basin, a 600-mile-wide (965-kilometer-wide) feature known as the "Grand Canyon of the moon."

Human eyes had never seen Orientale in sunlight before, so the Artemis science team asked the astronauts to observe it very thoroughly. And they did, as Wiseman's description of one of the basin's features indicates.

"The annular ring, which I think everybody kind of describes as like a pair of lips or a kiss on the far side of the moon, from here is very circular in nature," Wiseman, the Artemis 2 commander, radioed to Mission Control.

"The northern part of it is wider, darker; the southern part is much lighter," he added. "It is very neat-looking — far more circular than I remember it looking in our training."

The crewmembers also got great looks at the moon's terminator — not a murderous cyborg roaming the gray landscape but rather the boundary line between day and night on the lunar surface. And it made quite an impression on them, especially Glover.

"Boy, I'm loving the terminator," he told Mission Control. "I've probably spent the most time describing into my recordings and thinking about and looking at the terminator.

"There's just so much magic in the terminator," he added. "The islands of light, the valleys that look like black holes — you'd fall straight to the center of the moon if you stepped in some of those. It's just so visually captivating. The terminator is the most striking thing that I've seen so far."

The astronauts also got looks at parts of the South Pole-Aitken Basin, one of the most dramatic features on the moon. It's the largest confirmed impact crater in the solar system, stretching more than 1,550 miles (2,500 km) from rim to rim.

And the south polar area is of great interest to scientists and Artemis mission planners. The region is thought to harbor large amounts of water ice, on the permanently shadowed floors of many of its craters. NASA plans to build one or more bases in the area in the 2030s, tapping into that water ice to support crews and to fuel rockets. (Water ice can be split into hydrogen and oxygen, key components of rocket fuel.)

Toward the end of Monday's flyby, the Artemis 2 astronauts were treated to a rare celestial spectacle: A total solar eclipse, seen from beyond the moon.

The eclipse wasn't visible to anyone on Earth; it was a consequence of Artemis 2's trajectory, which happened to line the moon and sun up in the proper way.

And it was very different than solar eclipses seen from our planet. Because the moon loomed so large to the Artemis 2 crew, it blocked out the sun for much longer — about 54 minutes, compared to 7.5 minutes, which is the approximate maximum period of totality for eclipses seen from terra firma.

The crew captured gorgeous photos of the eclipse, including one (shown above) in which Venus is visible. But they went about their business safely, donning eclipse glasses at the proper times, just as we must do here on Earth to protect our eyes.

The Artemis 2 astronauts are now on their way home, helped out by the historic flyby, which served to slingshot them back toward Earthj. They'll arrive here on Friday (April 10), ending their 10-day mission with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego.

But they'll doubtless carry the lunar flyby, and the entire mission, with them for the rest of their lives.

"It was an incredible experience," Koch said shortly after the flyby. "I just had an overwhelming sense of being moved by looking at the moon."

Artemis 2's historic, action-packed lunar flyby is in the books.

Artemis 2 looped around the moon's far side today (April 6), in a nearly seven-hour encounter that gave its four astronauts views of Earth's nearest neighbor that human eyes had never seen before.

The Artemis 2 crewmembers also observed a total solar eclipse from beyond the moon and set a big spaceflight record, traveling farther from their home planet than anyone ever had before.

A new distance record for humanity

Artemis 2 is the first mission to send astronauts beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) since Apollo 17 did so way back in 1972. The current flight launched on April 1, sending NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen aloft on board an Orion capsule that the astronauts named "Integrity."

Integrity arrived in lunar space early this morning. The capsule journeyed into the moon's "sphere of influence," the region where lunar gravity is stronger than that of Earth, at 12:37 a.m. EDT (0437 GMT).

About 13.5 hours later, the four Artemis 2 astronauts crossed another threshold, getting more than 248,655 miles (400,171 kilometers) from Earth. That was our species' old distance record, set in April 1970 by the three astronauts of NASA's Apollo 13 mission.

And Integrity continued cruising outward for about five more hours, reaching a maximum distance from Earth of about 252,756 miles (406,771 km) just after 7:00 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) — a mark the Artemis 2 crew hopes gets broken soon.

"We, most importantly, choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived," Hansen said shortly after Artemis 2 surpassed Apollo 13.

There were some touching moments as well. As the flyby began, the crew asked to name an unnamed moon crater they observed after their ship Integrity.

Another crater, they proposed, should be named Carroll in honor of Carroll Taylor Wiseman, wife of Artemis 2 commander Reid Wiseman, who tragically died in 2020 from cancer.

"Integrity and Carroll Crater, loud and clear," Mission Control replied.

Eyes on the moon — for science

But all of this action was just a warmup for the mission's main event — the flyby.

The encounter officially began at 2:45 p.m. EDT (1845 GMT), when Integrity was about 10,700 miles (17,220 km) from the lunar surface. And it was not a sightseeing cruise for the Artemis 2 astronauts; they studied the moon's surface for hours, following a detailed checklist drawn up by the mission science team.

After all, the flyby was a rare research opportunity. People hadn't viewed the moon up close in more than 50 years, and Artemis 2's unique "free return" trajectory — in which it looped around the moon without entering lunar orbit — afforded unprecedented views of the gray, cratered surface.

What's more, the human eye is very good at picking up subtle variations in color and texture — better than robotic spacecraft cameras, in fact. So, the Artemis 2 crew could conceivably detect details that help scientists better understand lunar geology and evolution, and help planners map out future crewed missions to the moon's surface.

One of the astronauts' key observation targets was the Orientale Basin, a 600-mile-wide (965 km) impact crater known as the "Grand Canyon of the moon." It straddles the line between the moon's near and far sides and, until Artemis 2, had never been seen in sunlight by human eyes, according to NASA.

The astronauts were therefore assiduous in their descriptions of the crater. Take, for example, Wiseman's words on one of Orientale's prominent features.

"The annular ring, which I think everybody kind of describes as like a pair of lips or a kiss on the far side of the moon, from here is very circular in nature," Wiseman, the Artemis 2 commander, told Mission Control.

"The northern part of it is wider, darker; the southern part is much lighter," he added. "It is very neat-looking — far more circular than I remember it looking in our training."

Artemis 2 complemented such naked-eye observations with photographic evidence, captured by an array of 32 cameras. Fifteen of those are mounted to Integrity; the other 17 are handheld instruments operated by the astronauts.

Those astronauts aren't robots, of course, so they have emotional reactions to what they see out of Integrity's windows. And Koch shared a bit of what she was feeling during the flyby with Mission Control.

"It was an incredible experience. At one point towards the end of the images of my time in Window 3, I just had an overwhelming sense of being moved by looking at the moon," Koch said.

"It lasted just a second or two, and I actually couldn't even make it happen again, but something just drew me in suddenly to the lunar landscape, and it became real," she added. "And the truth is, the moon really is its own body in the universe."

At 6:44 p.m. EDT (2244 GMT), Integrity lost contact with Mission Control as it disappeared behind the moon from Earth's perspective. This blackout, or loss of signal (LOS), was completely expected, so it wasn't exactly nerve-wracking.

"We've handed over between Deep Space Network sites the whole mission," Artemis 2 Flight Director Rick Henfling said before the blackout. "This is just like an extended handover. We know where the spacecraft is, we know where it'll be when we come out of LOS, and so we're not worried."

Integrity reestablished contact right on schedule, at 7:24 p.m. EDT (2324 GMT). But some important stuff happened during the 40-minute blackout.

For example, the high point of the flyby — or the low point, in orbital-dynamics terms — came at about 7:00 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) when Integrity made its closest approach, skimming a mere 4,067 miles (6,545 km) above the lunar surface. From this distance, the moon looked about as big as a basketball held at arm's length, NASA officials said during the Artemis 2 livestream.

Two minutes later, Artemis reached its farthest point from Earth, which is now the distance record for future astronauts to chase.

A solar eclipse, too

About six hours into the flyby, the Artemis 2 crew turned their attention to a different celestial spectacle — a total solar eclipse, which began at 8:35 p.m. EDT (0035 GMT on April 7).

It was a very different sight from the eclipses we're used to here on Earth. Because the moon loomed so large through Integrity's windows, the sun was hidden behind it for much longer — about 53 minutes, compared to a maximum of about 7.5 minutes for any total solar eclipse seen from our planet. (To be clear: This eclipse was visible only to the Artemis 2 astronauts. The moon and sun were not lined up for viewers on Earth.)

Eclipses allow scientists to study the sun's wispy outer atmosphere, known as the corona, which is usually swamped by our star's immense brightness. So, the mission team gave the Artemis 2 crew some instructions.

"We've included prompts for them to describe the features that they can see in the solar corona, which can ultimately help solar scientists understand these processes in general, especially given the unique vantage point that the crew are going to have relative to our orbiting spacecraft here on Earth and our observers, our scientists, here on Earth as well," Kelsey Young, NASA's Artemis science flight operations lead, said during a press conference on Saturday (April 4).

The sun was still dangerous for the Artemis 2 crew to look at; Integrity's windows did not provide the required eye protection. They therefore donned eclipse glasses to watch the event, just as we do here on Earth.

"This is continues to be unreal," Glover said during the eclipse. "The sun has gone behind the moon, and the corona is still visible, and it's bright and it creates a halo almost around the entire moon."

"The Earth is so bright out there, and the moon is just hanging in front of us, this black orb out in front of us," he added. "Wow! It's amazing."

Wiseman concurred.

"That was an absolutely spectacular and magnificent experience," Wiseman said.

The astronauts also reported seeing at least five impact flashes on the moon's darkened surfance, evidence of meteorid impacts on the lunar surface. They also had chances to see Mercury, Mars, Venus and Saturn from beyond the moon, NASA said.

Coming home

The flyby ended tonight at around 9:20 p.m. EDT (0120 GMT on April 7). With that milestone, Artemis 2 entered a new phase: the journey back to Earth.

"I can't say enough how much science we've already learned, and how much inspiration you've provided to our entire team, the lunar science community and the entire world with what you were able to bring today," Young radioed to the Artemis 2 crew after the flyby. "You really brought the moon closer for us today, and we cannot say thank you enough."

Wiseman thanked the science team for all their training that made the crew's observations possible.

"You all knocked it out of the park," Wiseman. "Thank you for giving us this opportunity."

The flyby slingshot Integrity and its occupants back toward Earth, without the need for any major engine burns. The capsule will arrive on Friday evening (April 10), coming home with a parachute-aided splashdown off the coast of San Diego.

That will mark the end of the Artemis 2 mission but the start of a new chapter — the buildup to Artemis 3. That crewed mission, targeted to launch in 2027, will test rendezvous and docking in Earth orbit. If all goes well, NASA will put boots down near the moon's south pole on Artemis 4 in late 2028. And the agency will start building a base there over the next few years.

Editor's note: Space.com Editor-in-Chief Tariq Malik and Spaceflight Writer Josh Dinner contributed to this report from NASA's Johnson Space Center, home of Artemis 2 Mission Control, in Houston.

HOUSTON, Tex. — Today (April 6), as NASA's Artemis 2 astronauts had their names etched into history books for becoming the farthest-ever humans from Earth, they took a moment to recognize the milestone by remembering someone no longer with us.

The previous distance record was held by Apollo 13, which traveled 248,655 miles (400,171 kilometers) from Earth at the farthest point of its mission. The Artemis 2 astronauts just surpassed that, marking the occasion with a teary-eyed dedication.

"A number of years ago, we started this journey in our close-knit astronaut family and we lost a loved one," Artemis 2 mission specialist Jeremy Hansen said to mission control. "Her name was Carroll: the spouse of Reid, the mother of Katie and Ellie."

Hansen was referring to Artemis 2 mission commander Reid Wiseman's wife, who tragically died of cancer in 2020. The crewmembers together requested naming a crater they identified on the moon after her.

Northwest of the moon's Glushko crater, on the same latitude as the Ohm crater, sits the proposed "Carroll" crater. Hansen called the crater a "bright spot" along the moon's near side that can be seen from Earth. As his crewmate spoke, Wiseman reached over to put a hand on Hansen's shoulder, as each member of the Artemis 2 crew moved into a collective embrace.

The mission's crewmembers chose to name a different crater after their Orion spacecraft, named Integrity.

As the astronauts wiped tears from their eyes, NASA's mission control responded to their transmission: "Integrity and Carroll Crater, loud and clear."

Orion's closest approach to the moon will take place later Monday, bringing the crew within about 4,000 miles (6,440 kilometers) of the lunar surface. That flyby begins at 7:02 p.m. EDT (2302 GMT), and will last a little more than three hours.

During that time, Orion will also reach its farthest distance from Earth, flying at a staggering 252,760 miles (406,778 kilometers) away from our home planet.

The crew's lunar observations are expected to wrap up at 9:20 p.m. EDT (0120 GMT, April 7), at which point, they'll officially be on their way back to Earth.

NASA's Artemis 2 moon mission just etched its name in the record books.

The four Artemis 2 astronauts have now traveled farther from Earth than any people in history, breaking the mark set by the Apollo 13 crew on April 15, 1970.

The old record — 248,655 miles (400,171 kilometers) — fell today (April 6) at 1:57 p.m. EDT (1757 GMT) as Artemis 2's Orion capsule began looping around the far side of the moon. Artemis 2 will get a maximum of about 252,760 miles (406,778 km) from its home planet, hitting that number tonight at 7:07 p.m. EDT (2307 GMT), NASA officials have said.

Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell knew this moment was coming. So, before his death in August of last year, he recorded a congratulatory message to share with the Artemis 2 crew — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen.

"Hello, Artemis 2, this is Apollo astronaut Jim Lovell. Welcome to my old neighborhood," Lovell said in the message, which Mission Control beamed up to Artemis 2 today.

"When Frank Borman and Bill Anders and I orbited the moon on Apollo 8, we got humanity's first up-close look at the moon, and got a view of the whole planet that inspired and united people around the world," he added.

"I'm proud to pass that torch on to you as you swing around the moon and lay the groundwork for missions to Mars for the benefit of all. It's a historic day, and I know how busy you'll be, but don't forget to enjoy the view. So, Reid, Victor and Christina and Jeremy, and all the great teams supporting you, good luck and Godspeed from all of us here on the good Earth."

That last line was a callback to Apollo 8's famous Christmas Eve message to the world, during which the three astronauts took turns reading the first 10 verses of the book of Genesis. Borman closed by saying, "God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth."

"That was an awesome message from Jim Lovell," Wiseman, the Artemis 2 commander, radioed to Mission Control today. "Very cool to hear him welcome us to the neighborhood. It's gonna be a great day."

Hansen took Orion's microphone just after Artemis 2 broke the record, sharing some poignant words with all of us.

"As we surpass the furthest distance humans have ever traveled from planet Earth, we do so honoring the extraordinary efforts and feats of our predecessors in human space exploration," Hansen said.

"We will continue our journey even further into space before Mother Earth succeeds in pulling us back to everything that we hold dear, but we, most importantly, choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived," he added.

Apollo 13 went farther than it was supposed to go. The mission was designed to orbit and then land on the moon, but one of its oxygen tanks exploded en route, nixing that plan. Mission Control and the three Apollo 13 astronauts — Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert — revamped the flight in real time, turning it into a lunar flyby that, seemingly against all odds, managed to return safely to Earth.

Artemis 2, by contrast, is right on track. It's a shakeout cruise designed to show that Orion can support astronauts in deep space, and today's flyby serves to slingshot the capsule back toward Earth. Orion will come home Friday (April 10) in a splashdown off the coast of San Diego.

If all goes to plan, the first Artemis moon landing will come in late 2028, on the Artemis 4 mission (after Artemis 3 tests docking technology and techniques in low Earth orbit, or LEO). Other touchdowns will follow, helping to build a base near the moon's south pole in the early 2030s.

Today's distance milestone was another first in a mission full of them. Artemis 2, which launched on April 1, is the first crewed mission of NASA's Artemis program and the first human spaceflight to go beyond LEO since Apollo 17 in 1972.

Artemis 2 pilot Victor Glover is the first person of color ever to travel beyond LEO, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen are the first woman and first non-American, respectively, to do so.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 2:08 p.m. ET on April 6 to include Hansen's quote.

The Artemis 2 astronaut mission is giving humans an up-close and personal look at the moon.

That eye-full view had not been possible since NASA's Apollo 17 astronauts departed the moon back in 1972, now over 50 years ago!

Scientists have plotted out a lunar observation campaign for the Artemis 2 crew, for the astronauts will be the first humans to survey certain areas of the moon's far side as they conduct their flyby today (April 6).

Naked-eye observations

Artemis 2 is sending four astronauts — NASA's Christina Koch, Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover, and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen — on a 10-day trip around the moon in an Orion capsule. The mission launched atop a Space Launch System rocket on April 1.

During the trip, the quartet are capturing images, making observations and detailing their views via crew tablets and crew-to-Earth communications, said Kelsey Young, the Artemis 2 lunar science lead at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

"The camera being used is a Nikon D5 Digital Single Lens Reflex camera with an 80-400 millimeter lens. Additionally, the crew will be making audio observations with both the naked eye and through the zoom lens," Young told Space.com.

"Also, they will be annotating anything they may want to capture via their crew tablets," she added. "Finally, Orion vehicle cameras will round out the lunar science dataset."

That work climaxes today during Orion's flyby of the moon, a move that will also serve to slingshot the capsule back toward Earth.

Lunar experts

Back here on Earth, a team of scientists are assisting the crew in spotting features on the moon, from cratering and volcanism to scouting out evidence for lunar ice deposits.

Those lunar experts are located in the Science Evaluation Room at Mission Control, at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Their work marks the first integration of lunar science into this generation of human exploration, Young said. The Artemis 2 mission is showcasing the first integration of a science officer, a science evaluation room and a science mission operations room.

Priority science objectives

As for lunar science objectives, priority 1 is determining what research work humans can uniquely do in the lunar environment. For example, the Artemis 2 astronauts are scoping out color variations on the lunar surface and looking for flashes on the moon caused by meteoroid strikes.

And the public can help with this latter effort, said Benjamin Fernando of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

"We need you and your telescope to observe flashes simultaneously — Monday, April 6 to Tuesday, April 7 — helping to avoid false positives from cosmic rays and allowing us to measure the relative sensitivity of the two observing methods," said Fernando.

The astronauts’ observation window extends out onto the near side in darkness, Fernando told Space.com, "so anything on the darkened hemisphere is a help to us!"

Impact Flash! is a citizen science project that invites individuals to observe the moon to search for impact flashes. The project is under the auspices of the Geophysical Exploration of the Dynamics and Evolution of the Solar System (GEODES), a team within the NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute.

“We need your help to find and study these flashes during the Artemis 2 mission and beyond,” explains the GEODES website.

Priority 2 is figuring out what is achievable under a wide range of illumination. This includes investigations of the moon's exosphere, its impact history and tectonic features and observations of potential future landing sites.

In the priority 3 group are items like examining the moon's limb and terminator, appraising the celestial body's volcanic history, and making observations of Earth from deep space.

Field-trip training

To hone their observational skills, the Artemis 2 crew did classroom training in lunar fundamentals.

Similarly, crew members also took field trips to such locations as the Kamestastin Impact Crater in Labrador, Canada and the Icelandic highlands.

Iceland has served as a lunar double for coaching NASA astronauts since the days of the Apollo moonwalks.

"Lunar science will be a part of humanity's return to the moon," Young said. The soon-to-fly voyage is a "proving ground for Artemis 3 and beyond."

For the first time in more than 50 years, humans are cruising through lunar space.

The four astronauts of NASA's Artemis 2 mission arrived in the moon's sphere of influence — the region where lunar gravity exerts a more powerful pull than that of Earth — today (April 6) at 12:37 a.m. EDT (0437 GMT).

The milestone occurred when the mission's Orion capsule was about 39,000 miles (62,764 kilometers) from the moon and roughly 232,000 miles (373,368 km) from Earth, a commentator said during NASA's Artemis 2 livestream.

The Artemis 2 astronauts — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen — are the first people to cross the lunar threshold since December 1972, when the three-person Apollo 17 moon-landing mission did so.

Artemis 2 will not touch down on the moon, or even enter lunar orbit. Rather, Orion will loop around the moon's far side this evening in a history-making flyby. During that encounter, Artemis 2 will get farther from Earth than any crewed flight ever has.

The distance record is currently held by the Apollo 13 astronauts, who got 248,655 miles (400,171 km) from our planet in April 1970. At the height of tonight's flyby, just after 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT), Artemis 2 will be 252,757 miles (406,773 km) away from the rest of humanity, NASA officials have said.

The Artemis 2 astronauts will study the moon during the flyby, gathering data that could help scientists better understand the terrain and geology of Earth's nearest neighbor. They'll also be treated to a total solar eclipse, which will not be visible to those of us here on terra firma.

In addition, the flyby will chart their path home: Lunar gravity will slingshot Orion back toward Earth. Artemis 2 astronauts will come home on Friday (April 10), ending their 10-day mission with a parachute-aided splashdown off the coast of San Diego.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 1:15 a.m. EDT on April 6 with NASA's revised time of Orion's entry into the moon's sphere of influence — 12:37 a.m. EDT rather than 12:41 a.m. EDT.

The Artemis 2 astronauts will get a rare skywatching treat on Monday (April 6).

The quartet will see a total solar eclipse that evening as they slingshot around the moon's far side, in a flyby that breaks humanity's all-time distance record.

And that eclipse will be something that none of us stuck on terra firma have ever seen. (And, to be clear, groundbound viewers won't see this one; it will be visible only to the Artemis 2 crew.)

"From our vantage point, the moon and the sun in the sky appear approximately the same size," NASA's Kelsey Young, Artemis science flight operations lead, said during a press conference on Saturday (April 4).

But Artemis 2's Orion capsule "has a much different view than we do," she added. "And so the moon appears much, much, much larger in their view than it does from us here on Earth."

As a result, the sun will disappear from Artemis 2's view for about 53 minutes on Monday — about seven times longer than the maximum period of totality possible for eclipses seen from Earth.

Artemis 2's total solar eclipse will begin Monday at about 8:35 p.m. EDT (0035 GMT on April 7), 90 minutes after Orion reaches its maximum distance from Earth — 252,757 miles (406,773 kilometers), which is about 4,000 miles (6,400 km) farther than NASA's Apollo 13 mission got in April 1970.

Eclipses give solar scientists a rare chance to study the sun's wispy outer atmosphere, or corona, which is usually drowned out by the overwhelming glare of the solar disk. So NASA is pressing the Artemis 2 crew into sun-watching service on Monday evening.

"We've included prompts for them to describe the features that they can see in the solar corona, which can ultimately help solar scientists understand these processes in general, especially given the unique vantage point that the crew are going to have relative to our orbiting spacecraft here on Earth and our observers, our scientists, here on Earth as well," Young said.

Such work is part of a broader flyby observation campaign, during which the four Artemis 2 astronauts — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency — train their sharp eyes on the moon.

And human eyes are special, Young said; they're capable of picking up nuances of shade and color that the cameras on robotic lunar orbiters can miss. She cited the example of the Apollo 17 astronauts, who noticed oddly orange regolith on the moon that eventually revealed "that volcanic processes were active on the lunar surface much more recently than we had expected before."

So the astronauts' up-close observations on Monday should be quite valuable.

"We're looking for the crew to take time during their flyby, let their eyes adjust to what they're seeing, and call out any of those subtle color nuances, especially on the parts of the far side that have never been seen before by human eyes," Young said. "And we're able to ask more intelligent questions because of what Apollo gave us and because of what those orbiting spacecraft provided to us."

Monday's skywatching event won't be unprecedented, by the way: The Apollo astronauts — who orbited the moon rather than flew by it, as Artemis 2 will do — also saw solar eclipses from lunar realms, Young said.

The eclipse campaign comes as something of an unexpected treat for the Artemis 2 astronauts, who had been targeting an early February launch. Minor issues with their Space Launch System rocket pushed things back a bit, however, into a window that allows them to see a celestial spectacle.

"That's something that we hadn't been thinking we were going to be able to do," Hansen said on Saturday, during an interview with Canadian media. "But because we launched on April 1 — the birthday of the Royal Canadian Air Force, I'll just add in there — we're going to get to see that now, which is pretty neat."

Monday's lunar flyby will send Artemis 2 back toward Earth. The astronauts will splash down on Friday (April 10) off the coast of San Diego, bringing their 10-day moon mission to an end.

On Christmas Eve 1968, the crew of NASA's Apollo 8 moon mission captured the "Earthrise" photograph, which is perhaps the most famous image ever taken from space. Soon, the astronauts of Artemis 2 will try to replicate it during their own flight around the moon.

Artemis 2 will perform its flyby around the moon's far side on Monday (April 6), more than 57 years after Apollo 8 became the first mission to take humans around the moon. During their lunar loop, the Artemis 2 astronauts will aim to recreate the Earthrise image, in the hope that the new photo can have the same unifying effect that the original did.

Earthrise was more than simply a photograph. Its depiction of Earth's blue marble rising in the distance above the barren lunar surface illustrated how fragile our world really is amidst the vastness of space, and how, despite our differences, all of us share one planet.

Taken three years into the United States' direct involvement in the Vietnam War, during an era in which environmental concerns were beginning to gain ground, Earthrise became the poster child for anti-war and pro-environment campaigners.

The photograph was unplanned and unexpected. Unlike Artemis 2, which will swing around the far side of the moon just once at an altitude that varies between about 4,000 and 6,000 miles (approximately 6,430 and 9,650 kilometers) without entering lunar orbit, the Apollo 8 spacecraft performed 10 orbits of the moon.

It was during the fourth orbit, as Apollo 8 emerged from the far side of the moon, that Lunar Module Pilot Bill Anders spotted something through the window.

"Oh my god, look at that picture over there!" he exclaimed, as recorded in the mission transcript. "There's Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty!"

Indeed it was. Anders was armed with a Hasselblad camera with a 250mm telephoto lens. He raised it to take a snap.

"Hey, don't take that — it's not scheduled," joked Mission Commander Frank Borman beside Anders. Though Borman was joking, it did indicate how strictly scheduled everything they did on the mission was.

Anders realized he had a roll of black-and-white film in the camera. Quickly he asked Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell for the color film and, switching hatch windows to get a better view, took the photograph that became known as Earthrise.

Part of the beauty of the Earthrise photograph is that it was unplanned and unexpected — a perfect moment during humanity's most daring space mission up to that point, and at Christmas too.

The crew of Artemis 2 — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency — could also get a chance to see their own Earthrise, and this time imaging it is most definitely on the schedule.

In fact, they won't just be going for Earthrise, but also "Earthset" — capturing Earth close to the lunar horizon just before it slips behind the limb of the moon as Artemis 2 begins its 45-minute journey around the far side. The astronauts will have just minutes, at best, to capture Earthrise and Earthset before our planet either gets too high in the sky or drops below the horizon, respectively.

Even if the crewmates are successful in capturing their images, Artemis 2's Earthrise (and Earthset) images won't look exactly like Apollo 8's. For one thing, Apollo 8 was just 60 miles (97 km) above the lunar surface when Anders took the photograph, while Artemis 2's Orion capsule, named Integrity, will be up to 100 times higher.

They'll also be using very different cameras. Apollo's Hasselblad cameras were state of the art at the time, but Artemis 2's digital Nikon D5 cameras have far greater functionality and control over settings to get the perfect shot.

Another key variable is how the surface of the moon will be illuminated at the time, which depends on exactly when Artemis 2 arrives at the moon. Anders took his image of Earthrise over a lunar surface bathed in sunlight, but that won't be the case for Artemis 2.

"Although the lunar far side will only be partially illuminated during the flyby, the conditions should create shadows that stretch across the surface, enhancing relief and revealing depth, ridges, slopes, and crater rims that are often difficult to detect under full illumination," NASA officials said in a statement on Thursday (April 2).

However, NASA has been thinking about this for a long time, and the Artemis 2 Visualization Lead, Ernie Wright of Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, has produced artistic depictions of how Earthrise from Artemis 2 might appear under different lighting conditions. Given Integrity's high altitude, rather than looking like they are flying low over the surface as was the case with Apollo 8, the crew of Artemis 2 will see the moon appear about the same size as a basketball at arm's length, providing a truly unique viewpoint.

The original Earthrise image had such influence in part because of the circumstances on Earth at the time it was taken. Artemis 2 is also flying during a time of war and environmental danger, with tensions high across the globe. We can only hope that a new Earthrise image will provide a timely reminder that we all live together on a single fragile planet.

The parallels between the Artemis 2 and Apollo 8 moon missions now include a stirring holiday message.

As they circled the moon on Dec. 24, 1968, the three Apollo 8 astronauts read the first 10 verses of the Book of Genesis during a live TV broadcast that reached an estimated 25% of Earth's population.

Mission commander Frank Borman wrapped up the reading with these words: "And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth."

On Saturday (April 4), as Artemis 2's Orion capsule sped toward the moon, a CBS News reporter asked mission pilot Victor Glover if he wished to share any Easter thoughts with those of us here on Earth.

"I don't have anything prepared. I'm glad you brought it up, though; I think these observances are important," Glover responded.

Then he gave us some words that showed how thoughtful and eloquent he is, and how well he can think on his feet.

"You guys are talking to us because we're in a spaceship really far from Earth, but you're on a spaceship called Earth that was created to give us a place to live in the universe," Glover said. "Maybe the distance we are from you makes you think what we're doing is special, but we're the same distance from you. And I'm trying to tell you — just trust me — you are special."

Glover invoked God and the Bible in his impromptu address, but he took pains to reach believers and non-believers alike

"In all of this emptiness — this is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe — you have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together," he said of Earth. "I think, as we go into Easter Sunday, thinking about all the cultures all around the world, whether you celebrate it or not, whether you believe in God or not, this is an opportunity for us to remember where we are, who we are, and that we are the same thing, and that we've gotta get through this together."

Apollo 8 and Artemis 2 are the first missions of their respective programs (Apollo and Artemis) to send people to the moon. (In fact, Apollo 8 was the first human spaceflight mission ever to go beyond Earth orbit.)

Like Apollo 8, Artemis 2 will not land on the lunar surface; rather, it will loop around the moon's far side, a milestone that will occur on Monday evening (April 6). That flyby will slingshot Artemis 2's Orion — which holds Glover, fellow NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Christina Koch and Canada's Jeremy Hansen — back to Earth, where it will arrive on Friday (April 10).

On the same day that Apollo 8 delivered its Christmas Eve message, lunar module pilot Bill Anders snapped one of the most iconic photos ever taken — the famous "Earthrise" shot, which showed our gorgeous planet hanging over the moon's desolate gray dirt.

The Artemis 2 astronauts will try to recreate that photo during their lunar flyby on Monday. And hopefully the image will have similar effects to the original, which has been credited with helping to inspire the environmental movement and drawing all of us on this fractured world just a little closer together.

We now know how far the Artemis 2 astronauts will get from Earth — and that distance will be unprecedented.

The Artemis 2 crew — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — will travel a maximum of 252,757 miles (406,773 kilometers) from their home planet, NASA announced today (April 3).

The current human-distance record, set in April 1970 by the three astronauts of NASA's Apollo 13 mission, is 248,655 miles (400,171 km).

Artemis 2 will set the new mark on Monday (April 6), when its Orion capsule loops around the far side of the moon and starts heading back to Earth.

The mission was always expected to break Apollo 13's record. But the new distance estimate — which was revealed by Judd Freiling, the Artemis 2 ascent flight director, during a press briefing this afternoon — carries more weight than previous ones did.

That's because it was calculated after Orion's translunar injection (TLI) burn, a nearly six-minute-long maneuver that sent the capsule out of Earth orbit and on its way to the moon. Orion aced the TLI on Thursday evening (April 2), charting the course for the rest of the mission — and giving NASA some real numbers to crunch.

"The translunar injection burn is the last major engine firing of the mission," NASA officials wrote in the Artemis 2 press kit.

"It propels Orion on a path toward the moon and sets it on the free-return trajectory that will ultimately bring crew back to Earth for splashdown," they added. "Though only two days into the mission, it essentially doubles as Orion's deorbit burn as well."

As those words indicate, Artemis 2 will not land on the moon, or even enter lunar orbit. It was designed from the start as a flyby mission, which aims to show that Orion is capable of carrying astronauts to and from the moon. If all goes to plan, more ambitious Artemis flights will follow, including the program's first crewed lunar landing with Artemis 4 in late 2028.

Apollo 13, by contrast, was supposed to touch down on the moon. However, an oxygen-tank explosion 56 hours after launch scotched those plans and put the mission into survival mode.

And survive it did, thanks to the ingenuity and perseverance of the Apollo 13 astronauts — commander Jim Lovell, lunar module pilot Fred Haise and command module pilot Jack Swigert — and the folks in Mission Control. Lovell, Haise and Swigert made it back to Earth safely after swinging around the moon, etching their names into the history books for multiple reasons.

No fooling: Today is a huge day for NASA, human spaceflight and space fans around the world.

NASA plans to launch its Artemis 2 moon mission from Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida today (April 1) at 6:24 p.m. EDT (2224 GMT). You can watch the liftoff live here at Space.com, beginning at 12:50 p.m. EDT (1650 GMT), and get updates via our Artemis 2 liveblog.

And you really should tune in, for Artemis 2 will do something the world hasn't seen in more than half a century.

Artemis 2 will use a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket to send four astronauts — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canada's Jeremy Hansen — on a 10-day trip around the moon and back to Earth in an Orion capsule.

No humans have ventured to lunar realms — or even beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) — since NASA's Apollo 17 moon-landing mission in December 1972.

All of the Apollo astronauts were also white American men, so Artemis 2 will make some demographic history as well: Glover, Koch and Hansen will become the first person of color, first woman and first non-American, respectively, ever to travel beyond LEO.

As its name suggests, Artemis 2 will be the second mission in NASA's Artemis program of moon exploration. Artemis 1 sent an uncrewed Orion to lunar orbit and back in late 2022.

Like that previous mission, Artemis 2 is a test flight, designed to show that Orion is capable of supporting astronauts for an extended period in deep space. It will mark the capsule's crew-carrying debut and third spaceflight overall, after Artemis 1 and an uncrewed test mission to Earth orbit in 2014.

NASA will notch yet more milestones on Artemis 3, a 2027 mission to Earth orbit that will test Orion's ability to dock with one or both of the Artemis program's crewed moon landers (SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon, both of which are still in development).

And, if all continues going to plan, NASA will land astronauts near the moon's south pole on Artemis 4, which is currently targeted for late 2028. The agency will keep sending crewed and robotic missions back to the area, building up a base and learning how to live and work far from Earth — knowledge that will help the agency make the next giant leap to Mars in the 2030s or 2040s, the thinking goes.

That sustained, increasingly ambitious activity will mark a big difference from the Apollo days. Back then, NASA just wanted to put boots on the moon before the Soviet Union did in order to demonstrate technological superiority over its space race rival. The big push was to put down flags and footprints, not build a base.

So, while today's launch will evoke Apollo for many viewers, it's really about the future — charting a path through deep space that humanity has not yet taken.

Once the Artemis 2 astronauts get beyond the protective environment of Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field, they will be subject to space radiation.

While en route to and from the moon, the four-person Artemis 2 crew will be vigilant, eyeing radiation detectors and listening for caution and warning alarms. They will also be outfitted with active dosimeters, devices that measure exposure to radiation, such as X-rays or gamma rays.

Artemis 2's Orion spacecraft is relatively highly shielded. However, the astronauts would still take defensive measures if they encountered particularly high radiation levels — from a powerful solar storm, for example. The astronauts would establish a shelter utilizing central stowage bays, whose contents would be moved to a known "hot spot" within Orion. Doing so would create a lower-dose region in the capsule, helping to reduce the crew's radiation exposure.

Radiation shielding

Artemis 2 will send NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen, on a roughly 10-day trip around the moon and back to Earth. NASA is targeting a launch as early as April 1.

As its name suggests, Artemis 2 will be the second mission of NASA's Artemis program. The first, Artemis 1, successfully sent an uncrewed Orion to lunar orbit and back in late 2022.

During Artemis 1, Orion spent more than 25 days in space and traveled a total of 1.4 million miles (2.25 million kilometers), gathering a wealth of valuable data about the deep-space environment and the capsule's performance within it.

"From the measurements on Artemis 1, we learned that the Orion is a good vehicle to be in during a radiation storm, as it is compact and dense and hence offers up good radiation shielding," said Stuart George, radiation instrumentation lead at NASA's Space Radiation Analysis Group (SRAG), based at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"We learned that the Orion radiation storm shelter performs as expected and at different locations in the vehicle," George told Space.com.

Artemis 1 carried an instrument-laden manikin and two torso-only "body phantoms," which showed that doses to internal organs can be much lower than doses to skin during space weather events, said George.

The radiation exposure of the Artemis 2 crew will be gauged by Hybrid Electronic Radiation Assessors (HERA) and by small Crew Active Dosimeter badges that the crew will wear. There are six active HERA sensors deployed at various spots inside the Orion crew module.

Additionally, NASA has again partnered with the German Space Agency DLR, using an updated model of its M-42 sensor — an M-42 EXT — for Artemis 2. The new version — four of which will fly on Orion during Artemis 2 — offers six times more resolution to distinguish between different types of energy, compared to the Artemis 1 version.

Shelter in place

What about "go, no-go" decision-making for Artemis 2 in regards to dealing with a space weather or other space radiation event?

"While background galactic cosmic rays are difficult to shield from due to their high energies, solar particle events generated by the sun are a different matter," George said.

For solar particle events, NASA has predefined radiation dose rate levels after which the crew will work to construct a radiation shelter to reduce their exposure, said George.

If that dose rate threshold is exceeded, he added, the Artemis 2 crew would take material out from spacecraft storage bays and place those objects along the least shielded wall of the Orion capsule to build a radiation shelter.

"In addition, if an event is particularly bad, there are some places in the capsule, such as storage bays and down by the toilet, that the crew can go to," said George. Such areas would be pretty tight but would offer up even more shielding.

Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen has a special mission patch for his historic moon flight, which could launch as soon as April 1.

Jeremy Hansen, who is with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), will fly as a mission specialist on the Artemis 2 mission alongside three NASA astronauts: Reid Wiseman (the Artemis 2 commander), pilot Victor Glover (who will become the first Black person to leave low Earth orbit, or LEO) and mission specialist Christina Koch (the first woman to do so). Hansen will become the first non-American to leave LEO.

There are many mission patches flying with the astronaut quartet, with all four sporting the Artemis 2 main mission patch as well as a "Freedom 250" commemorative patch marking the year 2026, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. And Hansen's flight suit patches include a special one symbolizing the meaning of the Artemis 2 mission for himself and his country, including Indigenous communities with whom he has spent time as a CSA astronaut.

"For the past decade, Jeremy has been fortunate to be invited by numerous Indigenous communities to sit with Elders and Knowledge Keepers," the CSA said in an April 2025 explainer describing the patch. "They have blessed him with knowledge and teachings that he carries with him as he prepares for his mission. These precious experiences have given Jeremy a profound appreciation for Indigenous ways of knowing."

Hansen reflected on these journeys, including a 2023 vision quest with Turtle Lodge in Manitoba, during a livestreamed Q&A with entrepreneur Fred Bastien on the CSA's YouTube channel in November 2025.

"I've had the privilege, just in my travels across Canada, I've been invited by numerous [Indigenous] Elders to sit with them," Hansen said in that interview. "Sometimes I participate in traditional ceremonies, sweat lodges, pipe ceremonies, and then just sitting and chatting with Elders. Anybody who's had more time on this planet, the wiser you are."

The patch, CSA explains, has "elements of Anishinaabe culture." These are not meant to represent all aspects of First Nations, Inuit and Métis culture, but they do show "the importance of traditional knowledge and Indigenous Peoples in Canada." The patch was created by Anishinaabe artist Henry Guimond of Sagkeeng First Nation in Manitoba. Dave Courchene III (Sabe), the leader of the Turtle Lodge in Sagkeeng First Nation, also contributed to the patch.

Hansen said the patch incorporates one element of Anishinaabe perspectives — the culture's seven sacred laws, as represented by the heptagonal shape of the patch, as well as seven animals.

"Just quickly: The buffalo represents respect. The eagle, love. The bear is courage. The sasquatch is honesty. The beaver is wisdom. The wolf is humility, and the turtle is truth. None of us are perfect. We're not always able to walk in that integrity, but if we strive to, they will bring a rich life for each of us." (More information about the animals' meaning is available on the CSA webpage.)

These are some of the other significant elements of the mission patch. Information in the bullet points below comes from that same CSA explainer.

• The bow is meant to represent the Greek goddess of the hunt, Artemis, from which the Artemis program takes its name. Artemis is depicted launching both an arrow and the astronauts around "Grandmother Moon, who conveys the cycle of life … the arrow launches from Turtle Island, which refers to the continent of North America in the creation stories of some Indigenous peoples."
• Hansen's lifelong affiliation with the Royal Canadian Air Force, where he serves now as a colonel, is shown in the service's astronaut wings. The wings also "recognize the sacrifice of Jeremy's fellow service members and their families."
• The Canadian flag not only represents people from the nation who have worked directly on the mission but "also to symbolically bring all Canadians along on this mission around the moon."
• The famous asterism of the Big Dipper, as well as the North Star, are both depicted to show "a reminder that humanity exists amongst an unimaginably expansive universe." These sky sights are also an allusion to all cultures — including Indigenous peoples — who have navigated by them in the past.
• The North Star is depicted with five points, to represent the five members of Hansen's immediate family (him, his wife and three children) as well as the state of Texas, where Hansen and his family have been living since he was recruited as a CSA astronaut in 2009. (The Texas state flag features a five-pointed star.)
• The silver border of the patch is meant to represent the Orion spacecraft that will house the four astronauts on Artemis 2. The border also honors the CSA, which supported space exploration through "the extraordinary efforts of both its past and present members to … bring its benefits back to humanity."
• The thin blue line inside the silver border "represents the light or spirit that is in all of us — in all humankind, plants and animals. This spirit will travel with the crew aboard the capsule."

Artemis 2 will be Hansen's first mission; he was selected for the Canadian astronaut corps in 2009 but has waited to fly in large part because the CSA contributes a less-than-3% share to International Space Station activities. That works out to an astronaut mission to the orbiting lab about every six years at current flight rates.

Hansen's seat is funded separately to the ISS agreement, however. It came after Canada committed to the Artemis program by contributing the Canadarm3 robotic arm, which is expected to fly to NASA's planned Gateway moon-orbiting space station later this decade.

Hansen is the only spaceflight rookie among the Artemis 2 crew, but he is widely recognized within both NASA and CSA for significant program contributions on the ground. These include managing the training schedules for an entire astronaut class (the 2017 class), helping to create tools for the tricky repair of a dark matter detector on the ISS, and helping to advise space policymakers in Canada.

Luckily for the Artemis 2 astronauts, space-toilet technology has advanced a bit in the past half century.

The Artemis 2 mission, which is currently targeting an April 1 liftoff, will send four people on a 10-day trip around the moon in NASA's Orion capsule. It will be the first crewed flight to lunar realms since the Apollo 17 mission back in December 1972.

The Apollo astronauts did their business in the open, peeing into a roll-on cuff and pooping into plastic bags in the presence of their crewmates. But the Artemis 2 spaceflyers — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — will have access to a bona fide bathroom.

"We're pretty fortunate as a crew to have a toilet with a door on this tiny spacecraft," Hansen said in a video explainer about Orion's bathroom that was posted on YouTube last October.

It's "the one place that we can go during the mission where we can actually feel like we're alone for a moment," he added.

This sanctuary is not very spacious; it's about the size of a lavatory on a small passenger jet, according to Lockheed Martin, which built Orion for NASA. But even that amount of room is impressive, given that the capsule has just 330 cubic feet (9.34 cubic meters) of habitable volume — roughly the same as two minivans — and it has to accommodate four people for a week and a half. (The Apollo crew module was even smaller at 210 cubic feet, or 5.95 cubic m, but only three astronauts flew aboard it at a time.)

The door to Orion's lavatory is on the capsule's floor. This orientation may seem odd on Earth, but it won't appear so in the microgravity environment of space.

"You would float over to it, open up this hinging door and float on in," Hansen said.

The bathroom — or "hygiene bay," as NASA calls it — also features privacy curtains, which Artemis 2 astronauts may or may not use during the mission.

"If there's more space needed, they can leave the door open and put up a privacy curtain," Debbie Korth, deputy Orion Program manager at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, told reporters during a press conference in September 2025.

Once they're inside the hygiene bay, the Artemis 2 astronauts will have more to work with than just some bags and a condom-like cuff. (The Apollo astronauts were all men, remember, so designers didn't have to come up with waste-disposal solutions that worked for both sexes.) Indeed, Orion's toilet is very similar to the one that astronauts use on the U.S. segment of the International Space Station (ISS) — a device known as the Universal Waste Management System (UWMS).

The UWMS features a seat atop a canister, with a long, flexible urine hose attached. Each Artemis 2 astronaut will have his or her own funnel for that hose, to keep things as sanitary as possible. Urine will go down the hose, with air flow doing the shepherding work rather than gravity.

The UWMS on the ISS recycles urine, turning it into water that crewmembers can use. But Artemis 2 is a short mission, so its toilet doesn't need to do that; rather, the astronauts' urine will be vented into space several times per day.

The story is a bit different for solid waste.

"The feces get sucked down into the bottom, into a bag. You close that off, and you squish it down into the bottom, into the canister," Hansen said in the video. "During the mission, we'll have to change out that solid waste canister a few times, and all of that comes back to Earth with us."

Artemis 2 will be the spaceflight debut for the Orion hygiene bay: The equipment did not fly on Artemis 1, which successfully sent an uncrewed Orion to lunar orbit and back in late 2022. NASA has thought about what the astronauts can do if the equipment doesn't work as planned, and the solution is a blast from the past — basically, going back to Apollo-era toilet tech.

"We're actually flying contingency equipment — you know, urine collection bags — and they can still use the toilet for other functions, even without it functioning, to be able to dump the urine overboard," Korth said.

What does it mean to be the first humans in decades to fly to the moon?

The Artemis 2 astronauts will do just that on their historic mission around the moon, which could launch as soon as April 1. They are NASA's Reid Wiseman (the Artemis 2 commander), Victor Glover (pilot) and Christina Koch (mission specialist), as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen (mission specialist).

Much of the crew's time is necessarily occupied by training: sitting in simulators, doing practice launch days and splashdowns, and spending hours discussing how to live in their Orion spacecraft and accomplish the piloting and science they want to get done.

It will be a busy 10-day mission, in which the quartet will be the first humans to fly Orion — and the first people since 1972 to leave Earth's orbit for a trip around the moon. They and their ground-support teams also are aiming to set up for future Artemis missions — especially Artemis 4, which is scheduled to land astronauts on the moon in 2028. In a few words, this makes the astronauts busy indeed.

But the crew has also talked about the importance of the mission to them, not only as individuals with different life experiences but also as representatives of humanity. The crew has pointed to both history and humility: none of them were alive when the Apollo missions flew to the moon between 1968 and 1972. NASA's first Black and women astronauts were selected in 1978, and Canadian astronauts were first selected in 1983, meaning some of the Artemis 2 crew were well into their childhoods before they could conceivably imagine applying as astronauts.

And three of the four Artemis 2 crewmates will be making history of their own: Glover and Koch will become the first Black person and the first woman, respectively, to leave low Earth orbit, and Hansen will be the first non-American to do so.

Below are some thoughts from each of the astronauts explaining what Artemis 2 means to them. Space.com spoke with Wiseman, Glover and Reid during interviews in September 2025 at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. Hansen's remarks came from a Q&A in late November 2025 with entrepreneur Fred Bastien, on the CSA's YouTube channel.

Reid Wiseman

There's some Easter eggs in our patches. Some of the folks online have already discovered the Earth is in the Apollo 8 Earthrise formation. So some astute folks have picked up on that on the internet, which I really love. I love that people actually recognize that it was very intentional that we put that on there.

When I stand on the surface of Earth now, and I look at the moon at night — and I might see a waxing gibbous, but I know now on the far side that's a waning crescent — I'm flipping my brain around to all of those things, and just understanding that. Like, I've never spent time in my entire life thinking about that. But now it's all I think about.

And then when I think about that, and I think about what is the illum[ination] on the far side right now? Is it in shadow? Is it in illumination? What are the shadows doing, coming off the ridges of those canyons? And then I think about all these places [on the moon] that we've learned. And I'm just imagining. And every time I look up at the moon, I'm imagining, What do they look like on the far side?

Victor Glover

I gave a speech recently, and somebody came up to me after that. They sat through the whole thing and were like, "So, wait a minute: You're telling me we're going to the moon next year. Like, next year."

I don't know what the world is ready for, but when you do big things like [that], hopefully people will just know that moment will bring us together in a way that, whether we're ready for it or not, I hope we just respond to it in kind. We all let ourselves be moved by it and take a minute to be one thing, to be humans. Whether you're sitting at home in your sweats or working in Mission Control or riding the vehicle around the moon, we're all on this journey together, and so I hope that — ready or no — people embrace it, because it's for all of us.

[Trans-lunar injection] is a big milestone, but splashdown? When we land back on the Earth, the destination is Earth. You know, when we burn the engines for TLI … that's also our deorbit burn. And when we hit the Pacific Ocean under those three big old beautiful parachutes, my wife is going to breathe a sigh of relief, and that means the world to me. So, all of the other amazing things that'll happen on the way are irrelevant, if that doesn't go well. So splashdown is everything to me.

Christina Koch

For me, it's bigger than [our crew]. There's levels. Obviously, our crew cohesion and the respect we have from each other — for each other — is so important to get the job done, to get the mission done as successfully as possible, and safely as possible. And building that out to a wider team, to me, is just as important, if not more important. I think we stand on their shoulders. We wouldn't be here if it weren't for our wider teams.

I think for me, [Artemis 2] comes down to not being any single individual's accomplishments. The accomplishment that we can celebrate together is that we got here. Decades ago, we made the right decisions so that our astronaut corps brings diverse backgrounds together to solve the hardest problems. And that, to me, is what's truly worth celebrating and what I'm honored to be a part of.

Jeremy Hansen

It's a pretty exciting time for me and the entire crew right now. As we enter these final days of preparations, we never know when the launch will actually be.

It's this weird sense of, like, in some moments, I'm super-excited. And I'm thinking, "Wow, this is coming." I'm starting to feel that. And then the next moment, I'm like, "Wow, I gotta really get to work. Like, time is running out, and we still have work to do." But it's an extraordinary opportunity,

We're going to have extraordinary things that we will see. [Seeing] Earth from the moon: It's something amazing. And I think that's important for humanity to take a break during the mission and look at the image, and realize that we can do better here. That we can do extraordinary things when we collaborate. And it is possible to have international collaboration. It's possible to create together instead of destroying things. I hope that will be the case. I hope it [the mission] was something that tells the world we can do things better.

Space.com Staff Writer Josh Dinner and Editor in Chief Tariq Malik contributed to this story.

Update for 9:50 p.m. ET on March 18: NASA now says that it will hit its original target rollout date of March 19, thanks to faster-than-expected work on the Artemis 2 stack in the Vehicle Assembly Building. The rollout is expected to begin around 8 p.m. EDT on March 19 and last up to 12 hours. The story below was written after NASA pushed rollout back a day, to March 20.

NASA needs to wait one more day to roll its moon rocket back to the launchpad, but that shouldn't affect when it launches.

The Artemis 2 Space Launch System (SLS) rocket has been inside NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida since its rollback from its launchpad last month. The agency had been gearing up for a March flight around the moon, but prelaunch tests revealed maintenance requirements engineers could only address back in the hangar.

Now, the agency is planning to roll SLS back to the pad at Launch Complex-39B (LC-39B) on March 20 — a one-day delay from its previous March 19 target. The culprit this time can be traced to an electrical harness for the flight termination system in need of a quick replacement. The work on said harness is already complete, but added just enough work to NASA engineers' pre-rollout checklist to push the rocket's transportation back to LC-39B by 24 hours. It won't, however, delay the April 1 target date for Artemis 2's launch, according to a NASA update.

NASA is still aiming to launch SLS during an Artemis 2 window that lasts from April 1-6. The mission is the first crewed installment of NASA's Artemis program, and the first flight of the Orion spacecraft with astronauts onboard.

The shakedown cruise will fly NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a 10-day trip around the moon on the first crewed mission to lunar space in more than half a century. It's designed as a stepping stone to later Artemis missions planned over the next few years that will test and mature technologies like deep space life support systems and new lunar landers for NASA's ultimate goal for the program: establishing a permanent human presence on the lunar surface.

It's a similar concept to how NASA has maintained the International Space Station's continual occupancy for the past 25 years, through crew rotations and cargo supply missions to sustain crews in space while they conduct scientific research in low Earth orbit. NASA wants a similar framework for missions to the surface of the moon, but must first perfect the technologies needed to enable such long-term excursions so far from Earth, where an emergency evacuation would take days instead of hours.

If all goes according to plan during Orion's debut astronaut mission around the moon on Artemis 2, NASA plans to launch Artemis 3 to low Earth orbit (LEO) to rehearse rendezvous and docking maneuvers with either or both of the two lunar landers contracted for the Artemis program. Those include SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander. Both have experienced development delays, however, and are part of the reason the current Artemis mission architecture is outlined the way it is.

Artemis 3 had originally been slated as the program's first moon landing, with a target launch in 2028. A recent programmatic shuffle, though, rearranged that roadmap to reshape Artemis 3 with the goal of launching to LEO in 2027, and designated Artemis 4 as the first mission to return astronauts to the lunar surface, which is still targeted for 2028. And, if NASA's timeline holds, the agency has indicated the possibility of a second 2028 moon landing on Artemis 5.

For that schedule to stick, Artemis 2 needs to go perfectly right, and soon. The March 20 VAB rollout for SLS will be the rocket's second journey to LC-39B, on a launch campaign NASA had originally hoped to have been wrapped by now.

The Artemis 2 SLS rolled to the pad for the first time on Jan. 17, and had targeted an early February liftoff. Issues during two subsequent "wet dress rehearsal" fueling test countdown simulations prompted the rocket's subsequent VAB rollback, leapfrogging the mission's possibility for a March launch to its available dates in April. NASA officials have stated the existence of launch windows for Artemis 2 beyond its April opportunities, which include April 30, but have not provided dates past next month.

NASA is planning to livestream the March 20 SLS rollout, which typically takes about 12 hours from first motion inside the VAB to its dropoff at LC-39B. The four-mile journey is made possible thanks to NASA's crawler-transporter vehicle, which carries the massive 322-foot (98-meter) tall rocket and mobile launch platform at an average speed of 1 mph (1.6 kph).

NASA's Artemis 2 moon mission will put its astronauts in danger — but just how much danger is tough to say.

The agency announced on Thursday (March 12) that it's targeting April 1 for the launch of Artemis 2, which will send four astronauts on a 10-day journey around the moon and back to Earth.

All crewed space missions are risky. But Artemis 2 will be just the second flight of the Artemis program and the first to carry astronauts, so there's not enough data to properly quantify the risks involved, NASA officials said.

"I wouldn't actually put a number on it," Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, said during a briefing on Thursday (March 12) following completion of the Artemis 2 flight readiness review.

Reporters repeatedly pressed Glaze and John Honeycutt, chair of the Artemis 2 mission management team, for numbers during that briefing. And a few did come up.

For example, Honeycutt noted that new rockets have historically launched successfully on their debut flights about 50% of the time. So that may have been the expectation for Artemis 1, the first flight of the Artemis program's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. (Artemis 1 was a success, sending an uncrewed Orion capsule to lunar orbit and back in late 2022.)

Human spaceflight programs that are launching regularly could probably expect a failure rate of about 2% — 1 in 50 — on their second or third liftoffs, Honeycutt added. But Artemis' cadence isn't exactly regular, given that there will be about a 3.5-year gap between the first and second missions if Artemis 2 does indeed get off the pad in early April.

"That basically means we're probably not 1 in 50 on the mission going exactly like we want to, but we're probably not 1 in 2 like we were on the first flight," Honeycutt said.

"That's what I would tell you," he added. "I think we're being really careful not to really lay probabilistic numbers on the table for this mission, just given the small amount of data."

The range Honeycutt cited is consistent with numbers released recently by the NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG), in a report about NASA's handling of its Artemis Human Landing System Contracts — awards given to SpaceX and Blue Origin to develop and operate crewed moon landers for the program.

In the report, which was posted online Tuesday (March 12), the OIG estimated that there's a 1-in-30 risk of failure overall during a crewed Artemis mission to the lunar surface, and a 1-in-40 risk during the moon operations phase.

The OIG report also puts this risk threshold into context, comparing it to that of other NASA human spaceflight programs. For example, the relevant number is 1 in 200 for a 210-day commercial crew mission to the International Space Station — that is, one flown by SpaceX with its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule. (Boeing also holds a NASA commercial crew contract but has yet to fly an operational astronaut flight to the orbiting lab.)

The risk of crew loss during the Apollo moon missions was a rather frightening 1 in 10, according to the OIG report. And the managers of NASA's space shuttle program, which flew from 1981 to 2011, "thought they were operating at a 1 in 100 loss of crew threshold, but years later determined the actual number was 1 in 10 for the early flights," the OIG report reads.

Honeycutt's reluctance to put a hard number on the Artemis 2 risk therefore makes a lot of sense. As that example from the space shuttle days shows, estimates made using scant data are likely to be imprecise and in need of future revision.

There are other complications as well, which are related to the relatively small sample sizes and diversity of dangers involved in human spaceflight.

"We have pursued loss of mission, loss of crew-type number assessments, but I'm not sure we understand what they mean," Honeycutt said.

As an example, he explained that the agency's modeling work identifies micrometeors and orbital debris (MMOD) as the biggest single risk to the human spaceflight enterprise.

"It's real, right? But when have the last two bad events occurred? Going uphill, in that highly energetic event," Honeycutt said, presumably referring to the space shuttle Challenger and Columbia accidents in 1986 and 2003, respectively, which killed a total of 14 astronauts. (Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, and Columbia broke apart during reentry due to damage the orbiter sustained during launch.)

"So, you know, we can fool ourselves sometimes into thinking, 'Really? Is that the biggest risk to the mission — MMOD?'" he said.

Honeycutt seemed to realize that such admissions, valid and honest as they are, would probably spawn stories like the one you're reading now. "Well, this oughta make for some good reading over the next few days," he said with a smile, drawing laughter from the journalists in the room.

NASA's next launch to the moon is back on track.

Artemis 2 managers met over the past two days, conducting the mission's flight readiness review (FRR) ahead of rolling its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion capsule back to the launch pad for liftoff. Repairs to the SLS were recently completed inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, where ground teams will now prepare the vehicle for transportation to KSC's Launch Complex-39B.

That rollout is now scheduled for March 19, with NASA targeting a launch as soon as April 1, agency officials announced today (March 12).

"During the flight readiness review, we had extremely thorough discussions — very open, transparent," Lori Glaze, NASA's Exploration Systems Development acting associate administrator, said during a post-FRR press briefing today. It's a short timeline, but NASA officials say they're putting safety first as they work toward their next launch opportunity.

"We talked a lot about our risk posture and how we're mitigating those risks," Glaze said. "We reviewed the challenges that we've had and how we've addressed them, and we talked about the work that remains, what's left to do, and how we're going to get through all of that."

Artemis 2 is NASA's first crewed mission to the moon in more than 50 years. It will launch NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, on a 10-day journey around the moon and back to Earth aboard the Orion spacecraft.

Their mission had been scheduled to get off the ground earlier this month. SLS had a shaky initial fueling test during the rocket's first "wet dress rehearsal" (WDR) countdown simulation but successfully completed that procedure during a second attempt in February. Procedures following that WDR, though, uncovered a disruption with the flow of helium in the SLS upper stage, which prompted a Feb. 25 rollback to the VAB for repair.

Once back in its hangar, NASA engineers diagnosed and addressed the issue with enough confidence to target Artemis 2's April launch opportunity. The problem was traced to a quick-disconnect (QD) seal on SLS' upper stage. The QD is the interface where umbilicals from the rocket's launch tower transfer fuel into the vehicle. A similar problem led to an aborted countdown during the first Artemis 2 WDR, when hydrogen was detected leaking from a QD on the SLS first stage.

"Our combined engineering teams across our ground systems and SLS teams came up with a design fix. That design fix was implemented on a test article, and we have successfully tested it, and we have qualified it for use on Artemis 2, and the modified QD is already on the upper stage," Exploration Ground Systems Program Manager Shawn Quinn said during today's briefing.

Now, NASA officials are confident the rocket will be ready to launch as soon as April 1.

Helium is used to maintain certain environmental systems and to pressurize SLS' propellant tanks. But the flow issue was found after the completion of the second Artemis 2 WDR and did not interfere with its success. That issue is now resolved, and NASA officials determined that a third fueling test won't be needed after the Artemis 2 stack makes it back to the pad. Instead, the mission will progress straight to its launch opportunity.

"Every time we tank the vehicle, it takes a little bit of the life out of those tanks," Glaze told Space.com during today's briefing.

"We've exercised the team. We've exercised the hardware, and I'll just tell you, from my perspective, when we tank the vehicle the very next time, I would like it to be on a day that we could actually launch," she added. "I want to be able to poll 'go' to launch."

As its name suggests, Artemis 2 will be the second mission of NASA's Artemis program — but it's the first to fly a crew aboard Orion. An uncrewed Orion capsule launched on Artemis 1 in November 2022 to certify the spacecraft's flight systems in lunar orbit. Now, Artemis 2 will verify the capsule's ability to support astronauts in deep space.

Ultimately, the goal of NASA's Artemis program is to establish a sustained presence on and around the moon. The agency hopes that doing so will build up the skills and knowledge needed to set up a crewed outpost on Mars, which it hopes to do in the 2040s. Artemis 2 was originally designed as a precursor to the program's first moon landing on Artemis 3 in 2028, but a recent shakeup has restructured NASA's plans.

Artemis 2's mission remains unchanged: fly a single figure-eight loop around the moon and back to Earth. The roadmap for missions after that, however, has shifted slightly. Artemis 3 will no longer land on the moon. Instead, that mission will focus on rendezvous and docking maneuvers between Orion and SpaceX's Starship lunar lander and/or Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander. Both of those private vehicles won NASA Human Landing System contracts to provide landing services for future Artemis missions, and the space agency has indicated a willingness to fly with whatever spacecraft can be ready in time.

With the new timelines, NASA hasn't pushed its 2028 goal to put boots on the lunar surface. But it has shifted the program's first lunar landing to Artemis 4 and aims to accomplish the same with Artemis 5 within less than a year of its predecessor.

If Artemis 2 cannot launch on April 1, NASA has other opportunities from April 2 to April 6, with another window opening April 30 and possibly extending into May.

The high-speed, safe return to Earth of the Artemis 2 moon crew depends on the thermal protection system of the mission's Orion's crew module. It must endure blistering temperatures to keep crew members safe.

However, following the uncrewed Artemis 1 lunar flight test in late 2022, it was found that ablative thermal protective material had unexpectedly chipped away from Orion's heat shield during its plunge through Earth's atmosphere.

Despite that hiccup, the Artemis 1 mission was successful, making an ocean splashdown under parachutes on Dec. 11, 2022, following nearly 26 days of flight.

Cause of the issue

In a post-flight analysis of the Artemis 1 heat shield, NASA identified more than 100 locations where ablative thermal protective material was liberated during Orion's speedy reentry.

NASA, along with contractors and an independent review team, launched an investigation to establish the technical cause of the issue. An analysis was done, including over 100 tests at unique facilities across the country.

The finding: Orion's heat shield did not allow for enough of the gases generated inside a material called Avcoat to escape. This permitted pressure to build up and cracking to occur, causing some charred material to break off in several locations, NASA reported.

Beat the heat

Engineers at Lockheed Martin — the main contractor for Orion — built Orion's heat shield and thermal protection system. Measuring 16.5 feet (5 meters) in diameter, Orion's beat-the-heat shield is the largest of its kind developed for missions carrying astronauts.

Orion's ablative material, Avcoat, was also used on NASA's Apollo moon missions. However, the building process has changed since then, according to Lockheed Martin.

"Instead of having workers fill 300,000 honeycomb cells one by one with ablative material, then heat-cure the material and machine it to the proper shape, the team now manufactures Avcoat blocks — just fewer than 200 — that are pre-machined to fit into their positions and bonded in place on the heat shield's carbon fiber skin," the aerospace firm's website explains. This process is a timesaver, the company has said.

A key factor

During Orion's Artemis 1 reentry, the craft used what's called a skip guidance entry technique.

That maneuver had Orion dipping into the upper part of Earth's atmosphere and using atmospheric drag to reduce speed. Orion then used the aerodynamic lift of the capsule to skip back out of the atmosphere and then reenter for final descent under parachutes to splashdown.

While Artemis 1 was an uncrewed mission, NASA has said that the temperature inside Orion remained comfortable and would have been safe for astronauts, had any been aboard.

Modified trajectory

Now fast forward, quite literally, to the upcoming Artemis 2 mission, which will launch four astronauts around the moon as soon as early March.

"NASA has modified the trajectory by shortening how far Orion can fly between when it enters Earth's atmosphere and splashes down in the Pacific Ocean," Kenna Pell, an Orion public affairs official at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, told Space.com. "This will limit how long Orion spends in the temperature range in which the Artemis 1 heat shield phenomenon occurred."

Similarly, Blaine Brown, Orion spacecraft mechanical systems director for Lockheed Martin, told Space.com that a tiger team — which included representatives from NASA, Lockheed Martin and an Independent Review Team — determined that a modified Artemis 2 reentry trajectory will minimize char loss and provide more than adequate margin on thermal performance.

Skip the skip

"This modified trajectory involves a slightly steeper entry profile and elimination of a skip, resulting in shorter downrange landing," Brown said. "We performed extensive testing and analysis on the Avcoat block materials to ultimately reproduce the char liberation phenomenon seen on Artemis 1."

Brown said that the material being used on Artemis 3 — NASA's first human return-to-the-moon mission, targeted to launch in 2028 — is actually the same formula that was flown on Artemis 1 and that will fly on Artemis 2.

"We just slightly modified the density to allow gases in the ablative material to escape during high heating and cool down," said Brown. "We support NASA's decision to fly the Artemis 2 mission with its current heat shield and are committed to seeing Orion safely launch and return on its historic mission to the moon with crew onboard."

Time-sensitive challenge

All that said, a NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG) report, issued last month, focused on the return of humans to the moon.

In the NASA OIG's 2025 Report on NASA's Top Management and Performance Challenges, it noted that "the most time-sensitive challenge for NASA's effort to return humans to the moon is preparing for Artemis 2." NASA must address various challenges, the report added, to safely fly the four astronauts on the planned 10-day mission.

"While NASA considered Artemis 1 to be a near-perfect flight, it revealed technical issues that need to be addressed before Artemis 2 can launch," the OIG report reads. "Specifically, the ablative outer material of Orion's heat shield did not properly vent the gases normally produced during entry into Earth's atmosphere, leading to widespread cracking and char loss."

Root cause

Furthermore, the NASA OIG report explained that, "given NASA's current understanding of the root cause, the Agency intends to reuse the heat shield design for Artemis 2 while flying a modified reentry trajectory that is less severe."

While this approach is technically feasible, the report observes, "it is also complex and contingent on a successful test campaign and does not retire the heat shield risk for Artemis 3. The additional heat shield testing resulted in cascading delays to all Artemis missions starting with Artemis 2."

During Artemis 2's reentry, as the Orion spacecraft crew starts to feel the effects of Earth's atmosphere for the first time since launch, superheated plasma will begin to build up around the spacecraft as the friction of the surrounding atmosphere increases.

Communications to and from the crew will be temporarily blocked by that plasma.

How the heat shield behaves this time on its modified, atmospheric deep-dive trajectory could be yet another nail-biter.

The astronauts of NASA's Artemis 2 moon mission want to become a mere footnote in the annals of space history.

Artemis 2 will send NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canada's Jeremy Hansen on a 10-day flight around the moon. As the first crewed trip to lunar realms since Apollo 17 in 1972, this mission will be momentous — but the Artemis 2 astronauts hope future generations have reason to gloss over their contributions.

"I hope they forget all about Artemis 2," Koch told Bill Whitaker of CBS' "60 Minutes," which aired a piece about the mission on Sunday night (Feb. 1). "I think that's a little bit extreme, but we talk about our legacy being enabling the future missions, all the way from Artemis 3 to Artemis 100 to missions to Mars."

"I completely agree," Wiseman said.

"But you're the first step," Whitaker pointed out.

"Yeah, but watch what's coming next," Hansen responded. "It gets pretty extraordinary from here."

NASA is targeting Feb. 8 for the launch of Artemis 2, which will take place atop a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket from Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida.

Hitting that date, however, is contingent upon the successful completion of numerous prelaunch checks, including a crucial SLS fueling test that's happening at KSC's Pad 39B today (Feb. 2). Artemis 2 has backup launch opportunities on Feb. 10 and Feb. 11. After that, there are windows available in March and April.

Artemis 2 is the first crewed mission of NASA's Artemis program, which aims to establish a permanent human presence on and around the moon by 2030 or so and, as Koch mentioned, help pave the way for crewed trips to Mars. If all goes to plan, Artemis 3 will put astronauts down on the lunar surface in 2028, and future missions will help establish and operate a base in the area.

You can watch the 13-minute "60 Minutes" Artemis 2 piece on YouTube. The discussion of the mission's legacy quoted in this article came from a separate, seven-minute "'60 Minutes' Overtime" segment, which you can find here.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

When Apollo 13 looped around the moon in April 1970, more than 40 million people around the world watched the United States recover from a potential catastrophe. An oxygen tank explosion turned a planned landing into an urgent exercise in problem-solving, and the three astronauts on board used the moon's gravity to sling themselves safely home. It was a moment of extraordinary human drama, and a revealing geopolitical one.

The Cold War space race was a two-player contest. The Soviet Union and the United States operated in parallel, rarely cooperating, but clearly measuring themselves against one another. By 1970, the United States had already landed on the moon, and competition centered on demonstrating technological capability, political and economic superiority and national prestige. As Apollo 13 showed, even missions that did not go as planned could reinforce a country's leadership if they were managed effectively.

More than half a century later, NASA's Artemis II mission will send humans around the moon again in early 2026, this time deliberately. But the strategy going into Artemis II looks very different from that of 1970. The United States is no longer competing against a single rival in a largely symbolic race.

As a professor of air and space law, I research questions of governance and conflict avoidance beyond Earth. From a space law perspective, sustained human activity on the moon and beyond depends on shared expectations about safety and responsible behavior. In practice, the countries that show up, operate repeatedly and demonstrate how activity on the lunar surface and in outer space can be carried out over time shape these expectations.

Artemis II matters not as nostalgia or merely a technical test flight. It is a strategic signal that the United States intends to compete in a different kind of moon race, one defined less by singular achievements and more by sustained presence, partnerships and the ability to shape how activity on the moon is conducted.

From a 2-player race to a crowded field

Today, more countries are competing to land on the moon than ever before, with China emerging as a pacing competitor. While national prestige remains a factor, the stakes now extend well beyond flags and firsts.

Governments remain central actors in the race to the moon, but they no longer operate alone. Commercial companies design and operate spacecraft, and international partnerships shape missions from the start.

China, in particular, has developed a lunar program that is deliberate, well-resourced and focused on establishing a long-term presence, including plans for a research station. Its robotic missions have landed on the moon's far side and returned samples to Earth, and Beijing has announced plans for a crewed landing by 2030. Together, these steps reflect a program built on incremental capability rather than symbolic milestones.

Why Artemis II matters without landing

Artemis II, scheduled to launch in February 2026, will not land on the moon. Its four-person crew will loop around the moon's far side, test life-support and navigation systems, and return to Earth. This mission may appear modest. Strategically, however, crewed missions carry a different weight than robotic missions.

Sending people beyond low Earth orbit requires sustained political commitment to spaceflight, funding stability and systems reliable enough that sovereign and commercial partners can align their own plans around them.

Artemis II also serves as a bridge to Artemis III, the mission where NASA plans to land astronauts near the moon's south pole, currently targeted for 2028. A credible, near-term human return signals that the U.S. is moving beyond experimentation and toward a sustained presence.

2 different models for going back to the moon

The contrast between U.S. and Chinese lunar strategies is increasingly clear.

China's program is centrally directed and tightly controlled by the state. Its partnerships are selective, and it has released few details about how activities on the moon would be coordinated with other countries or commercial actors.

The U.S. approach, by contrast, is intentionally open. The Artemis program is designed so partners, both other countries and companies, can operate within a shared framework for exploration, resource use and surface activity.

This openness reflects a strategic choice. Coalitions among countries and companies expand their capabilities and shape expectations about how activities such as landing, operating surface equipment and using local resources are conducted.

When vague rules start to matter

International space law already contains a framework relevant to this emerging competition. Article IX of the 1967 outer space treaty requires countries to conduct their activities with "due regard" for the interests of others and to avoid harmful interference. In simple terms, this means countries are expected to avoid actions that would disrupt or impede the activities of others.

For decades, this obligation remained largely theoretical. On Earth, however, similarly open-ended rules, particularly in maritime contexts, created international conflicts as traffic on shipping lanes, resource extraction and military activity increased. Disputes intensified as some states asserted claims that extended beyond what international law recognized.

The moon is now approaching a comparable phase.

As more actors converge on resource-rich regions, particularly near the lunar south pole, due regard becomes an immediate operational question rather than a theoretical future issue. How it is interpreted – whether it means simply staying out of each other’s way or actively coordinating activities – will shape who can operate where, and under what conditions.

Washington is naming the race − without panic

During his second Senate Commerce Committee confirmation hearing, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman was asked directly about competition with China in lunar exploration. He emphasized the importance of keeping U.S. space efforts on track over time, linking the success of the Artemis program to long-term American leadership in space.

A similar perspective appears in a recent U.S. government assessment, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission's 2025 annual report to Congress. Chapter 7 addresses space as a domain of strategic competition, highlighting China's growing capabilities. The report frames human spaceflight and deep-space infrastructure – including spacecraft, lunar bases and supporting technologies – as part of broader strategic efforts. It emphasizes growing a human space program over time, rather than changing course in response to individual setbacks or the accomplishments of other countries.

Recent U.S. policy reflects this emphasis on continuity. A new executive order affirms federal support for sustained lunar operations, as well as commercial participation and coordination across agencies. Rather than treating the moon as a short-term challenge, the order anticipates long-term activity where clear rules, partnerships and predictability matter.

Artemis II aligns with this posture as one step in the U.S.'s plans for sustained activity on the moon.

A different kind of test

As Artemis II heads toward the moon, China will also continue to advance its lunar ambitions, and competition will shape the pace and manner of activity around the moon. But competition alone does not determine leadership. In my view, leadership emerges when a country demonstrates that its approach reduces uncertainty, supports cooperation and translates ambition into a set of stable operating practices.

Artemis II will not settle the future of the moon. It does, however, illustrate the American model of space activity built on coalitions, transparency and shared expectations. If sustained, that model could influence how the next era of lunar, and eventually Martian, exploration unfolds.

To ring in the new year, the Washington Monument was illuminated against the winter night with the number "250" on it in commemoration of the United States' upcoming 250th anniversary. The image, taken by NASA photographer Bill Ingalls, transforms a familiar sight into a beacon of celebration as the nation begins its yearlong observance of America's anniversary.

What is it?

Completed to honor George Washington, the Washington Monument is a 555-foot-tall (170 meters) marble obelisk, one of the most recognizable structures in the United States and a visual anchor for major civic gatherings in the capital.

On New Year's Eve 2025, the monument became the centerpiece of a large public show tied to the kick off of "America 250" observances. Reporting by the Washington Post described a projection that turned the obelisk into a towering "birthday candle" paired with a fireworks display.

Where is it?

The Washington Monument is located in Washington, D.C.

Why is it amazing?

The event was one of the rare times the monument has been used as a project surface, as large-scale projection shows like this don't happen too often.

Other imagery was projected onto the Washington Monument as part of the New Year's Eve celebration as well, including space-themed photos, from a full size Saturn V rocket to pictures taken by astronauts on the Apollo moon missions. The slideshow of space photos reveals how integral NASA and its many programs have been in American history.

Want to learn more?

You can learn more about the history of NASA as well as the history of the rocket.

NASA's Artemis 2 mission won't just send a quartet of astronauts around the moon — a trove of aerospace artifacts will make the trip as well.

A piece of the Wright Brothers' plane will fly on Artemis 2's Orion spacecraft, for example, as will an American flag that reached orbit on the first and final space shuttle missions, NASA announced on Jan. 21.

"Historical artifacts flying aboard Artemis 2 reflect the long arc of American exploration and the generations of innovators who made this moment possible," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement. "This mission will bring together pieces of our earliest achievements in aviation, defining moments from human spaceflight and symbols of where we're headed next."

Artemis 2's Orion will launch atop a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, sending NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen, on a 10-day trip around the moon and back to Earth aboard Orion.

NASA is targeting early February for the launch, which will be the first to send people to lunar realms since Apollo 17 back in 1972.

The mementoes placed on Orion will commemorate the historic nature of the mission, which takes place during the year of the United States' 250th anniversary.

The Wright Brothers made the first-ever successful powered flight back in 1903, getting their Wright Flyer (also known as Flyer 1) aloft over the dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Artemis 2 will carry a small piece of the plane, a 1-square-inch (6.5 square centimeters) swatch of muslin fabric that's on loan from the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.

A smaller piece of this same swatch has already reached space, getting there on the STS-51D mission of the space shuttle Discovery back in 1985, according to NASA officials.

Artemis 2 won't be the first trip to deep space for a piece of the Wright Flyer, by the way: A different swatch of the pioneering plane flew to Mars aboard NASA's Ingenuity helicopter, which became the first aircraft ever to ply the skies of a world beyond Earth. (The artifact, like Ingenuity, remains on Mars today.)

Also flying on Artemis 2 is an 8-by-13-inch (20 by 33 centimeters) American flag that went up on STS-1 and STS-135 — the first and last space shuttle missions, in 1981 and 2011, respectively — and 2020's Demo-2, the first astronaut mission that SpaceX ever conducted.

The coming moon mission will carry another flag, too.

"A flag that was set to fly on NASA's Apollo 18 mission is included in the flight kit and will make its premiere flight with Orion," NASA officials wrote in the same statement. "The flag serves as a powerful emblem of America's renewed commitment to human exploration of the moon, while honoring the legacy of the Apollo pioneers who first blazed the trail."

Apollo 18 was cancelled in 1970, as were Apollo 19 and Apollo 20, due to budget cuts and shifting national priorities after the U.S. won the Cold War-era space race to the moon. As a result, Apollo 17 became the final mission of the Apollo program.

In total, Orion will carry about 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) of mementoes and artifacts on Artemis 2, according to NASA. Here's a brief rundown of the other historical payloads:

• Negative of a photo taken in 1964 by Ranger 7, the first NASA mission to beam up-close imagery of the moon back to Earth. The Ranger missions were designed to help NASA select safe landing sites for the Apollo missions. Therefore, "the photo represents a major turning point in the race to the moon that will be echoed today through the success of Artemis," NASA officials wrote in the statement.
• Soil samples dug from the base of "moon trees," which grew from seeds that flew to lunar orbit and back in late 2022 on NASA's uncrewed Artemis 1 mission. Such trees have sprouted at 236 different places around the U.S., but the soil flying on Artemis 2 comes from moon trees growing on the campuses of NASA's 10 research centers.
• An SD card carrying the names of millions of people who participated in NASA's "Send Your Name to Space" campaign for Artemis 2.
• Stickers and patches provided by the Canadian Space Agency and the European Space Agency (ESA), which are partners on the mission. ESA, for example, provided Orion's service module.

NASA's first crewed mission toward the moon in more than half a century moved closer to liftoff recently, as the Artemis 2 astronauts completed a full launch day dress rehearsal in Florida.

The four astronauts set to fly around the moon on the Artemis 2 mission participated in the launch day dress rehearsal on Dec. 20 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. The test marked a milestone in final preparations for NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen for their journey around our nearest celestial neighbor in early 2026.

The dress rehearsal, also known as a countdown demonstration test, simulated the launch day timeline, including the astronauts suiting up in spacesuits, a walkout and getting in and out of their Orion spacecraft, according to a NASA statement.

The action took place at the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at KSC, where Orion and its European Service Module and the gigantic Space Launch System (SLS) rocket are being prepared and tested ahead of rollout and launch.

Artemis 2 is currently slated to launch from KSC no earlier than Feb. 5, 2026. The mission will mark the first time astronauts will journey to the vicinity of the moon since Apollo 17 in December 1972.

A day before the rehearsal, newly confirmed NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman posted on the social media platform X that "Artemis 2 is America's return to the moon, and the start of something much bigger."

The following mission, Artemis 3, will attempt to land astronauts on the surface of the moon. The mission is officially scheduled for 2027, but reports suggest that it will not launch until 2028 at the earliest.

Atoms and molecules from Earth's atmosphere have been traveling across space to settle on the moon for billions of years, new research has found, explaining a lunar mystery that goes back to the Apollo missions.

Not only do the findings point to a way in which a historical record of Earth's atmosphere could be deposited on the moon, but they also imply a healthy abundance of elements that could be useful to humans should we ever set up a lunar base.

In samples of lunar regolith brought back from the moon by Apollo astronauts, scientists have found puzzling amounts of volatiles, which in this case are elements such as water, carbon dioxide, helium, argon and nitrogen that have low boiling or sublimation points. Some of these volatiles are brought to the moon from the sun via the solar wind, but the abundances of these volatiles, particularly nitrogen, cannot solely be explained by the solar wind.

So, in 2005, scientists at the University of Tokyo proposed that some of the volatiles have come from Earth, as particles leaking out from our planet's upper atmosphere when they receive a nudge from energetic particles riding the solar wind. However, the Tokyo scientists believed this could only have happened in the early days of Earth's history, before our planet had a chance to develop a strong global magnetic field that they thought would block particles from escaping.

However, a team at the University of Rochester now suggest that this assessment was wrong.

The Rochester team, led by graduate student Shubhonkar Paramanick and astronomy professor Eric Blackman, used computer simulations to model when these volatile particles could have reached the moon based on two different scenarios.

One scenario depicted the early Earth, when our planet's magnetic field was weak and the solar wind was much stronger, describing the period in Earth's history when the Tokyo team reckoned that our atmosphere was more susceptible to being lost to space. The other scenario represented the modern Earth environment, with a stronger planetary field and a weaker solar wind emanating from the older sun.

Somewhat unexpectedly, the Rochester team found that the modern Earth scenario was actually more adept at transporting Earth's atmospheric particles to the moon.

That's because the simulations showed that, rather than blocking the particles' escape route, the Earth's magnetic field provided a highway for the particles. Some of our planet's magnetic-field lines are long enough to reach all the way to the moon.

In 2024, researchers at the University of Oxford found evidence in 3.7-billion-year-old iron-rich rocks in Greenland that the ancient Earth had a magnetic field comparable in strength to today. This is the oldest evidence we have of Earth's magnetic field, so from at least that time, and possibly earlier, through to today Earth's atmosphere has been leaking bit by bit into space and onto the moon.

"By combining data from particles preserved in lunar soil with computational modeling of how the solar wind interacts with Earth's atmosphere, we can trace the history of Earth's atmosphere and its magnetic field," said Blackman in a statement.

This means that the lunar regolith could still hold a very long-term record of Earth's atmospheric history, which in turn could teach us about how Earth's climate, environment and even life has changed over billions of years. Furthermore, the insights gained don't have to be confined to our planet.

"Our study may also have broader implications for understanding early atmospheric escape on planets like Mars, which lacks a global magnetic field today but had one similar to Earth in the past, along with a likely thicker atmosphere," said Paramanick. "By examining planetary evolution alongside atmospheric escape across different epochs, we can gain insight into how these processes shape planetary habitability."

Elsewhere in the solar system, Pluto's thin atmosphere also leaks onto its largest moon, Charon, although Pluto does not have an intrinsic magnetic field with which to transport its atmospheric particles. Instead, it is Charon's gravity that tugs at the particles in Pluto's atmosphere, with Pluto's weak gravity allowing the atmospheric particles to be stolen away.

This swapping of atmospheric atoms and molecules could also have positive repercussions for a future human presence on the moon. Water, for example, has obvious uses. (Water was also brought to the moon long ago by asteroid and comet impacts.) The fact that the stream of particles from Earth to the moon has been flowing for so long means that more volatiles than scientists expect might have built up on the lunar surface, just waiting for astronauts to extract them. In a way, it could be the ultimate down payment toward a human presence on the moon.

Then findings were published on Dec. 11 in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.

The Apollo program stands as one of humanity's most daring and awe-inspiring ventures into the unknown. Led by NASA in the 1960s and 70s, it was a bold response to the space race.

From the fiery launch pads to the silent, dusty plains of the lunar surface, Apollo missions redefined what was possible and ignited imaginations across the globe.

This quiz invites you to journey back through the triumphs and trials of the Apollo era.

Whether you're a seasoned space enthusiast or a curious newcomer, you'll encounter questions that span the program's technical marvels, iconic astronauts and unforgettable moments.

Try it out below and see how well you score!

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Interest in the moon has been high – just in the past two years there have been 12 attempts to send missions to the moon, nearly half of which private companies undertook. With so much activity, it's important to start thinking about coordination and safety.

To some, this concern may seem premature. About 10 to 20 missions are headed to the moon in the next few years – far short of the thousands of satellites operating in Earth's orbit. And the area around the moon, referred to as cislunar space, is very large. Earth's orbital area is often considered to extend from near Earth out to geostationary orbit, where a spacecraft orbits at a speed that makes it appear stationary from the Earth's surface.

Cislunar space extends from geostationary orbit out to the moon – an area with a volume 2,000 times larger than Earth's orbital area. This size discrepancy seems to suggest crowding around the moon may not be an immediate concern.

However, missions tend to choose from a select set of stable orbits around the moon, so the vastness of cislunar space may be misleading when thinking about whether missions will intersect. Also, most government sensors that track spacecraft aren't capable of consistently detecting and monitoring objects so far away from Earth, partly due to the glare from the moon itself.

That uncertainty, combined with the high cost of lunar missions, makes operators more likely to move their spacecraft to avoid a collision, even when the probability of a collision is quite low.

As an interdisciplinary team combining space policy and astrodynamics expertise, we've been studying how companies and space agencies could manage traffic in lunar orbit without unnecessary maneuvers. Our research, published in March 2025 in the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, shows that due to the popularity of certain orbits and the uncertainties regarding each spacecraft's location, potential collisions become an issue surprisingly quickly.

Our simulations show that with only 50 satellites in lunar orbit, each of those satellites will need to maneuver four times a year on average to avoid a potential crash – a significant cost in terms of fuel as well as potential disruption to mission objectives. Lunar orbit could easily reach that number of satellites within a decade if activity continues to increase.

Maneuvering satellites

Countries' reports on their current operations in lunar orbit seem to support our finding that congestion around the moon is quickly becoming a significant issue. In 2023, the Indian Space Research Organization reported it had maneuvered its Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft three times in four years, even though only six spacecraft orbited the moon in that time.

Better monitoring and coordination between different space agencies could prevent congestion and keep countries from having to regularly move their spacecraft.

Monitoring cislunar space is not just important for safety – it can also help support national security. Multiple countries have weapons that can destroy satellites, and some in the space community are concerned that space weapons could be placed in cislunar space to escape detection. The U.S. Space Force is considering the potential security dimensions of cislunar space.

The U.S. currently has significant gaps in its ability to monitor this region, and Mariel's research suggests that developing this capability – referred to as cislunar space domain awareness – should be a priority for national security. Improved monitoring would help the U.S. military observe activity in cislunar space, gather intelligence and assess potential threats.

Solutions in progress

Several research programs are experimenting in this area. The Air Force Research Laboratory is funding a program called Oracle that is developing multiple systems to improve the U.S. ability to monitor cislunar space.

The first Oracle satellite is expected to launch in 2027. It will be located at a Lagrange point, which is a spot between the Earth and the Moon where the gravitational pull of each object keeps the spacecraft in a stable position. From there, it can detect objects in cislunar space that sensors on Earth cannot see.

Improving monitoring is only one part of the solution. Entities sending missions to the moon, including governments and companies, will need to share the locations of their operational missions and coordinate to avoid predicted collisions.

A NASA program dedicated to tracking and assessing lunar traffic is helping to facilitate this effort. The program compares individual operators' information about their spacecraft's current and future planned location to identify potential close approaches. In the future, this type of coordination could improve safety, when combined with sensor observations from systems like Oracle.

Countries and companies planning missions to the moon could also try to coordinate before they launch their systems, so no missions end up operating too close together.

The Outer Space Treaty, a set of basic principles developed early in the space age, requires that countries avoid harmfully interfering with other countries' activities, but the treaty doesn't outline how to do this.

The United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space formed a team in February 2025 that hopes to address these and other coordination issues on the moon.

With government and commercial missions to the moon increasing, and NASA's next human mission to the Moon planned for early 2026, countries will need to work together to protect everyone’s interest in the moon.

NASA's 10 crewed Project Gemini flights, which launched in 1965 and 1966, were instrumental in delivering the knowledge and testing that would lead to landing astronauts on the moon in July 1969 during the Apollo 11 mission.

Often overlooked as the middle child of the American space program in that turbulent decade, Project Gemini provided astronauts, scientists and engineers vital information for the development of more ambitious human spaceflight efforts.

"Gemini: Stepping Stone to the Moon, the Untold Story" (St. Martin's Press, 2025) is an absorbing new release arriving on Nov. 11 written by noted space historian, journalist and New York Times bestselling author Jeffrey Kluger ("Apollo 8," "Holdout").

It offers up the riveting tale of the valiant souls both high aloft and on the ground whose unyielding efforts made possible the groundbreaking data that allowed for six crewed lunar excursions. Kluger also co-authored the 1994 book "Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13" with famed NASA astronaut Jim Lovell, which was adapted into director Ron Howard’s film "Apollo 13."

Here within Kluger's engrossing prose, the New York City-based author paints a vivid portrait of Gemini's endeavors, from its harrowing inception to its triumphant end, with exacting detail.

"I had long thought that a book on Gemini was sort of owed to the world," Kluger told Space.com. "That sounds a little grandiose to say that I'm giving the world a gift; I don't pretend I'm doing that. But there's nobody who addressed and wrote about and explored the Mercury program better and more compellingly than Tom Wolfe. I don't know if there’s ever going to be another book about the Mercury program, because how do you touch 'The Right Stuff?'

"Similarly, I and Andy Chaikin and a number of others, including a lot of astronauts, have written extensively about the Apollo program. But the Gemini program was very much the middle sibling of the space program. It wasn’t the first time we went into space. It wasn't when we went to the moon. People sort of forgot about Gemini. It was the middle seat on an airliner."

Kluger reminds us that Gemini was a program in which we learned to walk in space, rendezvous and dock in space, learned to fly long-duration missions in space, and learned to coordinate with other crewed spacecraft, on the Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 missions.

"There was drama, there was accomplishment, there was death, there was near death, there was peril. Gemini 8's spinout almost took the lives of Dave Scott and Neil Armstrong," Kluger said. "The Gemini 9 spacewalk could have taken the life of Gene Cernan. Charles Bassett and Elliot See did die when their plane crashed into the McDonnell Aviation headquarters in early 1966. And that story hadn’t been told. I felt like it was time to give the Gemini program its due. It was an opportunity not to be missed. It was unprotected turf, and I decided to claim it."

The Gemini launches were filled with monumental firsts, and Kluger's careful research into the topic exposed harsh truths about just how crucial and dangerous these NASA orbital missions were.

"Those monumental firsts are historically well recorded. Alexei Leonov became the first human being to walk in space, shortly before Gemini 4 flew. But when Gemini 4 did fly, Ed White became the first American to walk in space," Kluger said.

"The Soviets launched a couple of missions with two spacecraft at a time and overstated their accomplishment in calling it 'rendezvous.' In fact, these ships simply happened to be up in orbit at the same time and were separated by many kilometers. The mission included none of the delicate navigational dance required to perform rendezvous because they didn’t have the thruster capability, they didn’t have the computer capability and they didn’t have the piloting capability. Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 proved that one spacecraft could track another one in orbit and move within inches.

"Then, by Gemini 8, they actually did touch and dock with an Agena target vehicle. That was a huge milestone in getting to the moon, because we have the lunar orbit rendezvous technique in which the command module and service module had to dock and separate and re-dock in lunar orbit."

Long-duration missions were also completed for the first time during Gemini. Gemini 5 was an eight-day mission. Six days in, that flight broke the record for duration in space that the Soviets had held.

"Then Gemini 7 blew the doors off of Gemini 5 when Jim Lovell and Frank Borman stayed up for 14 days," Kluger shares. "Those were some big milestones, both in the American space program and space exploration in general. Gemini 11 also broke an altitude record using the Agena engine to climb to 856 miles [1,378 kilometers], an Earth orbit record that stood until 2024 when the Polaris Dawn mission with Jared Isaacman at the helm went up and broke that record."

Kluger hopes that readers of his comprehensive new Gemini book take away the sense of just how intrepid these astronauts were, and what an epic achievement their missions turned out to be. So many unknowns became knowns, done in very short order by these true American heroes.

"There were 10 flights that flew over the course of 20 months, which meant that every eight weeks we were rolling out a new Titan rocket, rolling out a new Gemini spacecraft, loading up a new crew, launching them into low-Earth, bringing them home safely, then doing it over again," he explained.

"Just how much excellence and accomplishment and coordination it took on the ground to get these astronauts and spacecraft ready was something really important to be gained from it. Buzz Aldrin was famously known as Dr. Rendezvous. He got his Ph.D. in Orbital Mechanics and Rendezvous from MIT after graduating from West Point, so there was no underestimating Buzz's intellectual wattage. He's a brilliant man, and he accomplished brilliant things."

"Gemini: Stepping Stone to the Moon, the Untold Story" lands in bookstores and online retailers on Nov. 11, 2025.

Prepare for a remarkable journey into magnificent magnification with "Nanocosmos: Journeys in Electron Space" (Abrams Books, 2025), a mesmerizing new science coffee table book from author, artist, documentarian and visual effects filmmaker Michael Benson. Here, size truly matters!

Inside this hypnotic 320-page hardcover, Benson takes readers into a strange miniaturized world exposed by the technological magic of scanning electron microscopes (SEM).

And here we have a pair of exclusive lunar impact glass images to share with you, taken from moon samples returned by the astronauts of NASA's Apollo 16 mission. Marvel at these diminutive gems brought home from outer space and wrap your mind around the micro-mini scale.

Per the book's official description, "The tiny worlds here, invisible to our unassisted eyes, are if anything more intricate, complex and extraordinary than anything so far seen in deep space. These include radiolarians, dinoflagellates and diatoms, as well as many varieties of insects, microscopic flowers and even lunar samples from the Apollo program. The composite mosaic micrographs in 'Nanocosmos' fuse art and science in revelatory ways, exposing an astonishing sublimity hidden to the naked eye."

Lunar impact glass is formed under the high heat and pressure caused by meteoroids hitting the moon’s regolith-covered surface. These impactors melt the disturbed lunar soil, creating molten material that instantly cools in flight to be manifested as glass shards, spherules and beads.

Benson produced "Nanocosmos" using hundreds of curated SEM scans that he captured over the course of six years at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Quebec. These sublime images display an uncanny beauty, symmetry, and design that defies all traditional descriptions.

In addition to art exhibits, films, and scientific endeavors into the mysteries of the universe, Benson was also responsible for supervising those swirling cosmology scenes in director Terrance Malick's "The Tree of Life" (2011) and "Voyage of Time" (2016). Additionally, he penned 2018's Hollywood history book titled "Space Odyssey" (2018), which chronicles the making of Stanley Kubrick's enigmatic sci-fi masterpiece from 1968, "2001: A Space Odyssey."

The first crewed moon landing in more than half a century may not be pulled off by SpaceX after all.

In April 2021, NASA awarded Elon Musk's company a $2.9 billion contract to provide the first crewed lunar lander for the agency's Artemis program. That vehicle, a modified upper stage of SpaceX's Starship megarocket, is supposed to land astronauts on the moon for the first time on the upcoming Artemis 3 mission.

But NASA isn't satisfied with the pace of Starship's development and is therefore shaking things up, acting agency chief Sean Duffy announced on Monday (Oct. 20).

"I love SpaceX; it's an amazing company. The problem is, they're behind. They've pushed their timelines out, and we're in a race against China," Duffy said on Monday morning, during an appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

"The president and I want to get to the moon in this president's term, so I'm gonna open up the contract," he added. "I'm gonna let other space companies compete with SpaceX, like Blue Origin."

Blue Origin, which was founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, won an Artemis Human Landing System contract of its own in 2023, an award worth $3.4 billion. The company plans to fulfill that deal with its Blue Moon lander, which was originally expected to make its crewed lunar debut on the Artemis 5 mission.

Musk voiced skepticism that Blue Origin could speed up its timeline enough to be ready for a crewed moon mission before SpaceX.

"Blue Origin has never delivered a payload to orbit, let alone the moon," the world's richest person said via X on Monday, qualifying that to "useful payload" in a follow-up post. (Blue Origin's huge New Glenn rocket carried a prototype of the company's Blue Ring spacecraft to Earth orbit on its first — and so far, only — launch this past January.)

Artemis 3's timeline has shifted to the right several times over the past few years, and not just because Starship is still in the testing phase; issues with spacesuits, NASA's Orion capsule and other tech have also played a role. (Orion will carry Artemis astronauts to lunar orbit, where they'll meet up with the lander that will deliver them to the surface.)

The launch date was originally targeted for late 2024 but was pushed back to 2025, September 2026 and then mid-2027.

And NASA is now apparently eyeing an even later timeline: In Monday's "Squawk Box" interview, Duffy suggests that 2028 is the target for Artemis 3.

The Artemis program has one launch under its belt — that of Artemis 1, which successfully sent an uncrewed Orion to and from lunar orbit in late 2022.

NASA is now gearing up for Artemis 2, which will launch four people on a 10-day journey around the moon next year. That mission remains on track to launch as early as February, Duffy said on Monday.

SpaceX's Starship, meanwhile, has launched on 11 suborbital test flights to date. The most recent two liftoffs, which took place on Aug. 26 and Oct. 13, respectively, were fully successful.

As Duffy noted, China has moon plans of its own: The nation plans to land astronauts on Earth's nearest neighbor by 2030 and is making serious progress toward achieving that goal. No humans have touched the lunar surface since NASA's Apollo 17 astronauts did so in December 1972.

The spacecraft that will carry astronauts to lunar realms for the first time in more than half a century now has a name.

The four astronauts of NASA's Artemis 2 mission, who could launch on their trip around the moon as early as Feb. 5, announced today (Sept. 24) that they have named their Orion capsule "Integrity."

"The name Integrity embodies the foundation of trust, respect, candor and humility across the crew and the many engineers, technicians, scientists, planners and dreamers required for mission success," NASA officials said in a statement today.

"The name is also a nod to the extensive integrated effort — from the more than 300,000 spacecraft components to the thousands of people across the world — that must come together to venture to the moon and back, inspire the world and set course for a long-term presence at the moon," they added.

The Artemis 2 crew consists of commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. The first three are all NASA astronauts, while Hansen represents the Canadian Space Agency.

The quartet will launch atop a Space Launch System rocket during a window that extends from Feb. 5 to April 26 of next year. The astronauts will fly Integrity on a loop around the moon and back home again, on a mission that will last about 10 Earth days.

Artemis 2 won't land on or orbit the moon. But it will be the first crewed mission to reach the lunar neighborhood since Apollo 17 in December 1972. And it will pave the way for Artemis 3, which will put astronauts down near the moon's south pole in 2027, if all goes according to plan.

And things are designed to accelerate from there: The Artemis program aims to establish a permanent, sustainable human presence on and around the moon, and to use the lessons learned via this effort to send astronauts to Mars.

The Artemis 2 crew didn't just pick "Integrity" out of a hat; arriving at the name was a long and drawn-out process, Wiseman said today during a press event at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"We got the four of us together and our backups, Jenny Gibbons from the Canadian Space Agency and Andre Douglas from NASA, and we went over to the quarantine facility here," Wiseman said. "We basically locked ourselves in there until we came up with a name."

They started with a lot of candidate monikers, he added.

"As we worked our way through this, we went big to small, which this crew does so well," Wiseman said. "And we started with the NASA core values, and then we looked at the Canadian Space Agency core values. And then we talked about what matters to us most in our core values. And then we looked out at what is going on with Artemis 2. What do we want this to be?"

In the end, he said, the crew determined that their chief goal for the mission is to help provide some "peace and hope for all humankind."

"So, we are bringing together the world," Wiseman said. "We are bringing together an amazing workforce, and they are bringing together an amazing vehicle. And at the end of all that, when you squeeze it all down, it created magic. So we're going to fly around the moon in the spacecraft Integrity."

It's a tradition in the human spaceflight world for a new spacecraft to be named by the first astronauts to fly it. For example, a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule made its debut this past June, on the private Ax-4 astronaut mission to the International Space Station. The Ax-4 crew gave that Dragon its name: Grace.

A mysterious lunar landslide might be the product of large chunks of debris from the impact that formed the crater Tycho slamming into the side of a moon mountain.

The Light Mantle, which is a bright 5-kilometer-long (3.1 miles) streak emanating from the base of a 2-km-tall (1.2 miles) mountain called South Massif, was a key target for NASA's Apollo 17 mission in 1972. With geologist Harrison Schmitt as a member of the crew, Apollo 17 returned from the moon with 243.6 pounds (110.5 kilograms) of rock samples, including two core samples from the Light Mantle.

There was so much material in the samples that some of it was kept away, stored and sealed, until the time came that scientists had better technology with which to study the samples.

That time is now.

"NASA were really forward-thinking during the Apollo missions to put some samples aside," said geologist Giulia Magnarini of London's Natural History Museum in a statement. "They were stored so that they could be studied using more advanced technology and new scientific approaches that hadn't even been thought of at the time."

The origin of the Light Mantle landslide is a mystery, partly because it is the only known landslide on the moon, meaning that we have nothing to compare it to. It's described as a "long run-out" landslide, as the debris that rolled down the mountain spilled out for a long way onto the Taurus-Littrow valley, but what carried it so far is also uncertain.

Using modern micro-CT scanning, which employed medical-level scans on the previously untouched core samples from the Light Mantle, Magnarini and her colleagues investigated clasts, which are rocky fragments that broke off from the slope of South Massif. They then compared the shape and composition of the clasts with what was predicted by computer models.

"The clasts tell us a lot about the process of the landslide itself and how the material within it has been transported," said Magnarini. "We saw that the finer material coating the clasts in the core comes from the clasts and not the surrounding debris, suggesting that the clasts broke up and helped the landslide to flow more like a fluid."

This would explain why the landslide produced such a long run-out, but what triggered the landslide in the first place? Magnarini's best bet is the formation 108 million years ago of the landmark lunar crater Tycho in the moon's southern hemisphere, far from Apollo 17's landing site.

Tycho is famous for its bright rays of ejecta material that cover a large area of the moon's southern hemisphere, and there are chains of small secondary craters leading away from Tycho, produced by large chunks of debris from the main impact falling back down onto the lunar surface. One of these chains points in the direction of South Massif and, despite the distance, Magnarini thinks that a chunk of debris from the Tycho-forming impact flew halfway around the moon and crashed into South Massif.

"It has been suggested that some of the material thrown up by the creation of Tycho might have struck South massif," said Magnarini. "This could have triggered the landslide that ultimately formed the Light Mantle."

Tycho's young age fits the bill; an older landslide would have been eroded away by micrometeorites long ago. That might be why we no longer see other landslides on the moon; impacts like Tycho are very rare now, compared to 3.5-4 billion years ago when most of the moon's craters formed.

Overall, Magnarini sees her research as helping to bridge the Apollo missions with the current Artemis program and NASA's plans to return astronauts to the surface of the moon.

"We've learned so many lessons from these samples about how to preserve, store and open lunar material without damaging the contents," said Magnarini. "This is already feeding into plans for Artemis' science and helping to develop new instruments."

Magnarini's team's findings were published Aug. 2 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

Between 1969 and 1972, six Apollo missions successfully landed on the moon. Each crew faced danger, discovery, and the thrill of the unknown. These 12 astronauts didn’t just visit another world; they rewrote the story of human exploration.

While some stayed in orbit, others explored lunar valleys, collected samples, and even drove moon buggies across the surface. Each astronaut contributed to our understanding of the moon and helped pave the way for future missions.

In this quiz, you'll be challenged to name all 12 lunar trailblazers.

Think you can list the men who made giant leaps for mankind?

Try it out below and see how well you score!

NASA astronaut Jim Lovell, who helped turn the near-disastrous Apollo 13 moon mission into an inspiring tale of ingenuity and survival, has died at the age of 97.

Jim Lovell passed away on Thursday (Aug. 7) in Lake Forest, Illinois, according to NASA officials. But the astronaut, a veteran of four pioneering spaceflights, left a mark on the agency and the nation that will last far into the future.

"Jim's character and steadfast courage helped our nation reach the moon and turned a potential tragedy into a success from which we learned an enormous amount," acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said in a statement on Friday (Aug. 8). "We mourn his passing even as we celebrate his achievements."

Lovell joined NASA in September 1962, as part of the agency's second-ever astronaut class. Among his eight colleagues in that group were Apollo 11 moonwalker Neil Armstrong and Ed White, the first American to walk in space.

Lovell first flew to space in December 1965 on Gemini 7, a two-person, two-week-long mission that featured the first-ever rendezvous of two maneuverable crewed spacecraft in Earth orbit. The two-astronaut Gemini 6A capsule came within a mere foot or so of Gemini 7 (carrying Lovell and Frank Borman) high above our planet on Dec. 15 of that year.

On Nov. 11, 1966, Lovell and Buzz Aldrin launched on Gemini 12, which circled Earth for four days. It was the final mission of the Gemini program, which was designed primarily to help pave the way for the Apollo moon push.

Lovell's third spaceflight was Apollo 8, the first crewed mission ever to go beyond Earth orbit. He served as command module pilot and navigator on the six-day flight in December 1968, which successfully went to lunar orbit and back. His crewmates were Borman and William Anders, who snapped the famous "Earthrise" photo on Christmas Eve of that year.

Then came Apollo 13 in April 1970, during which Lovell became the first person ever to reach space four times. He commanded the mission, which also included lunar module pilot Fred Haise and command module pilot Jack Swigert.

Lovell and Haise were supposed to become the fifth and sixth people ever to walk on the moon, but things didn't go according to plan. An oxygen tank in the mission's command and service module exploded, damaging the spacecraft and forcing the three astronauts into survival mode.

They abandoned their moon-landing plans and, working in concert with Mission Control in Houston, "converted their lunar module 'Aquarius' into an effective lifeboat," NASA officials wrote in Lovell's official biography.

"Their emergency activation and operation of lunar module systems conserved both electrical power and water in sufficient supply to assure their safety and survival while in space and for the return to Earth," the officials added.

Lovell wrote about this experience in "Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13" (Houghton Mifflin, 1994). The book, which he co-authored with science journalist Jeffrey Kluger, became the basis for the 1995 movie "Apollo 13," starring Tom Hanks as Lovell.

That movie, incidentally, popularized the phrase "Houston, we have a problem." But it's not entirely accurate; the actual quote — uttered by both Lovell and Swigert — is "Houston, we've had a problem."

James A. Lovell was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on March 25, 1928. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1952 with a bachelor of science degree. That same year, he married Marilyn Gerlach; they would have four children together. (Marilyn passed away in September 2023.)

From 1958 to 1962, Lovell served as a test pilot at the Naval Air Test Center in Patuxent River, Maryland. For part of that time, he was manager for the Navy's F4H "Phantom" Fighter program, which put into service supersonic jets built by McDonnell Douglas.

Overall, Lovell logged more than 7,000 hours of flying time, more than half of which came in jet aircraft, according to his NASA biography.

Lovell retired from the Navy and from NASA in March 1973, two years after completing the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. He then held several high-level jobs, including executive vice president of the Chicago-based telecom company Centel Corp., a post from which he retired on Jan. 1, 1991.

Lovell had been the oldest surviving Apollo astronaut. That distinction now goes to Aldrin, who is 95. Only five of the 24 astronauts who flew to the moon during the Apollo era are still alive: Aldrin, Charles Duke, Harrison Schmitt, David Scott and Lovell's Apollo 13 crewmate Fred Haise.

A new international award named for the first person to step foot on the moon will honor excellence in "space discovery" as established by the school known as "the cradle of astronauts."

The "Neil Armstrong Space Prize" was announced by Purdue University on Sunday (July 20) — the 56th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing — at an event held in Washington, D.C. The honor is intended to share the same clout as the Nobel Prize, but for advancements in space exploration.

"This prize carries Armstrong's name and Purdue's space legacy," said Mung Chiang, president of Purdue University, in a statement released by the school. "We unveil the creation of a Nobel-level prize for space at a transformational time for the next giant leaps in space."

Eight out of Purdue's 22 living astronaut alums joined Chiang at the National Building Museum to help introduce the prize. The Indiana university has the distinction of being the alma matter for more astronauts than any other school (28 in total). The award's namesake, Neil Armstrong, received his undergraduate degree in aeronautical engineering from Purdue in 1955.

Led by seven-time space shuttle mission specialist Jerry Ross, the seven other astronauts at the event included fellow shuttle veterans Roy Bridges, Mark Polansky and Charlie Walker, as well as suborbital fliers Sirisha Bandla, Marc Eagle, Beth Moses and Audrey Powers.

Set to be bestowed for the first time next year, the Armstrong Prize will be awarded in three categories: technologies that improve life on Earth, discoveries that increase our knowledge about the universe and achievements in space exploration that inspire future achievements.

Nominations for individuals or teams to receive the inaugural prize will be accepted beginning in August through Nov. 1, 2025.

The selection committee includes former NASA associate administrator Jim Free, SpaceX Starbase manager Kathy Lueders, former president of Blue Origin Rob Meyerson and the former head of NASA's science division Thomas Zurbuchen. The panel is chaired by Dan Dumbacher, professor of engineering practice at Purdue.

"At a time when space is more accessible than ever, this award aims to inspire the next generation of space leaders while highlighting Purdue's enduring role in space research, exploration, security and partnerships with NASA, the U.S. Space Force and the commercial space sector," said Arvind Raman, the John A. Edwardson Dean of Purdue's College of Engineering.

"Soyuz and Apollo are shaking hands now!"

Fifty years ago today (July 17), at 12:09 p.m. EDT (1609 GMT), history was made as two crewed spacecraft launched by two countries docked together in orbit for the first time. Three American astronauts and two Russian (then Soviet) cosmonauts met up for just under two days of joint operations, setting the stage for future cooperation in space.

"Very good to see you!" exclaimed Alexei Leonov, commander of the Soyuz side of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP, or Experimental-Flight Soyuz-Apollo in the Soviet Union), after the hatch between his spacecraft and the docking adapter was opened.

"Very happy, my friend!" replied U.S. commander Thomas Stafford in "Oklahomski," his unique version of Russian with a heavy Oklahoma drawl.

And then the Cold War rivals and space race competitors shook hands.

Soon after, the rest of the crew — cosmonaut Valery Kubasov and astronauts Vance Brand and Donald "Deke" Slayton — joined in on the greetings. It was those two Americans' first time in space and Kubasov's second. Leonov had previously performed the world's first spacewalk, and Stafford was on his fourth flight; his previous off-Earth experiences included a trip around the moon.

Glasnost and gifts

"Your flight is a momentous event and a very great achievement, not only for the five of you but also for the thousands of American and Soviet scientists and technicians who have worked together for three years to ensure the success of this very historic and very successful experiment in international cooperation," said then-U.S. President Gerald Ford during a call to space from the White House at the time.

"It has taken us many years to open this door to useful cooperation in space between our two countries, and I am confident that the day is not far off when space missions made possible by this first joint effort will be more or less commonplace," Ford said.

To mark the occasion, the crew members exchanged gifts. Plaques and medallions that had been designed to separate into halves — so one half could launch on Apollo and the other on Soyuz — were reassembled in space. The crew also signed formal documents, known as the "Space Magna Carta," that certified that this was this was first international space docking.

The commanders exchanged small flags of each others' countries and tree seeds to be planted later in their respective nations. The Soyuz crew also launched with a United Nations flag, which the American crew then brought back to Earth and which is on display today in the U.N.'s New York headquarters.

The five crew members took turns touring each other's spacecraft and came together for joint meals. Leonov surprised his U.S. counterparts with squeeze tubes labeled as containing vodka — in reality, they were filled with borscht (cold beet soup).

"The best part of a good dinner is not what you eat, but with whom you eat," said Leonov, replying to a reporter's question during a televised, in-flight press conference.

The U.S. and USSR crews returned to their respective spacecraft to sleep, but otherwise worked as one crew as long as their vehicles were linked. After 44 hours, 2 minutes and 51 seconds, the Apollo command module undocked from the Soyuz, and, as planned, created an artificial solar eclipse for the cosmonauts to photograph.

The U.S. crew then approached and docked with the Soyuz again for 2 hours, 52 minutes and 33 seconds before the two crews bid farewell to each and parted ways.

Leonov and Kubasov returned to Earth on July 21, landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan, while Stafford, Brand and Slayton stayed in orbit for another three days, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24, 1975.

50-year-old foundation

Despite preliminary talks about follow-up missions sending an Apollo capsule or space shuttle to a Soviet Salyut space station, the next time Russians and Americans would meet up in orbit coincided with the 100th U.S. human spaceflight, 20 years (almost to the day) after the ASTP crews exchanged handshakes.

On June 29, 1995, NASA's space shuttle Atlantis docked with Roscosmos' Mir space station. This time it was Vladimir Dezhurov, the commander of Mir's 18th crew, who clasped hands with STS-71 commander Robert "Hoot" Gibson.

The milestone was preceded by Russian cosmonauts flying with U.S. space shuttle crews and NASA astronauts joining Russian Soyuz crews, as well as a shuttle mission rendezvousing (but not docking) with Mir. After STS-71, eight more U.S. missions linked up with the Russian space station to rotate crews and deliver components for the complex.

The Shuttle-Mir program was considered Phase 1 of the International Space Station (ISS) program.

On Nov. 2, 2000, just about midway between the ASTP mission and today, astronaut William "Bill" Shepard and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev became the first crew to take up residency on board the ISS. Since then, for nearly 25 years, there has not been a day when U.S. astronauts and Russian cosmonauts have not been in space together.

"It made a really huge impression on me to see some people from the Soviet Union, which at the time we were not very good friends with in the middle of the Cold War, and then these brave American astronauts get along really well and cordially and with friendship," Mike Fincke, who as a NASA astronaut is set to return to the International Space Station for his fourth time on SpaceX's Crew-11 launch at the end of this month, said during a July 10 press conference in Houston. Fincke was 8 years old when the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project occurred.

"It made a big impression, not just on me, but on the rest of the world — that if the Soviet Union and United States can work together in space, maybe we can work together here on Earth," he said.

Moon dust may not be as harmful to humans as had been thought, with a new experiment showing that the typical air pollution on a busy street is more toxic than inhaling lunar dust.

"The results contribute to the safety case for returning humans to the moon," said Brian Oliver, who is a Distinguished Professor of Life Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney, in a statement.

Concerns about the toxicity of moon dust arose during the Apollo missions. Lunar dust is statically charged, allowing it to adhere to astronauts' space suits. After the astronauts clambered back inside their lunar lander following a moonwalk, the dust became airborne in the cabin and was inhaled, leading to the astronauts suffering respiratory problems that faded after about 24 hours. Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt described it as like having "lunar hay fever," with stinging eyes, sneezing and a sore throat.

Moreover, back on Earth, the Apollo flight surgeon reported similar problems after unpacking the used spacesuits. In their case, they reported that the symptoms grew worse after every mission, suggesting that repeated exposure to lunar dust exacerbates its toxicity.

Nevertheless, the anecdotal evidence is not a quantitative measure of the potential harm that lunar dust can do to humans. So Michaela Smith, who is a PhD student at the University of Technology Sydney's Respiratory Research Group, set about finding out.

Smith performed experiments using two lunar simulants – replicas of real lunar dust, since samples of real lunar dust are limited – that are analogous to moon dust found in the moon's dark volcanic lowland plains and its more ancient highlands, respectively. The simulant particles are smaller than 2.5 microns (millionths of a meter), small enough to be inhaled and then trapped in the lower airways of the lungs. To represent lungs, Smith introduced the simulant dust to two different types of lung cell, namely bronchial and alveolar cells, representing the upper and lower regions of the lungs, respectively.

Smith then conducted the same experiment but with airborne particulate matter sampled from a busy Sydney street, and compared the effects of lunar dust with that of air pollution.

Smith found that while the irregular shape and roughness of the lunar dust still irritates the lungs, its effects are significantly less than that of air pollution.

"It's important to distinguish between a physical irritant and a highly toxic substance," said Smith. "Our findings suggest that while lunar dust may cause some immediate irritation to the airways, it does not appear to pose a risk for chronic, long-term diseases like silicosis, which is caused by materials like silica dust [as on a construction site, for example]."

This is good news for NASA, who are still taking the health challenges of moon dust seriously as they plan the Artemis 3 mission that will see humans return to the surface of the moon for the first time since 1972.

For example, one strategy is to have the astronaut's spacesuits affixed to the exterior of the lunar lander, and the astronauts enter and leave the suits through an airlock within the lander without bringing the moon dust stuck to the suits inside the cabin. However, thanks to Smith's work, the problem of moon dust is perhaps no longer quite as serious as had been anticipated.

Smith's findings have been published in Life Sciences in Space Research.

Amazingly, the samples of material from the moon retrieved by the Apollo missions are still providing new insights more than 50 years later, in this case how tiny glass beads that litter the lunar surface are telling us about the explosive volcanic plumes that formed them 3.3 to 3.6 billion years ago.

"We've had these samples for 50 years, but we now have the technology to fully understand them," said Ryan Ogliore, a physics professor at Washington University in St Louis, in a statement. "Many of these instruments would have been unimaginable when the beads were first collected."

The tiny beads, less than a millimeter in size, are embedded in lunar rocks and mixed into the lunar regolith. They come in two varieties, orange and black, and were produced when drops of lava in plumes that violently erupted out of volcanoes cooled quickly in the cold vacuum on the lunar surface. Around 3.5 billion years ago, the the moon was drastically volcanically active, forming the dark patches of the lunar maria that today form the "face" of the "Man in the Moon."

"The beads are tiny, pristine capsules of the lunar interior," said Ogliore. "They're some of the most amazing extraterrestrial samples we have."

Ogliore was part of a team led by Thomas Williams, Stephen Parman and Alberto Saal of Brown University in Rhode Island, who deployed a variety of modern microscopic analysis techniques on the beads to learn more about the volcanic conditions in which the beads formed.

The main instrument used was a NanoSIMS 50 ion microprobe at Washington University, which can perform spectrometry at the atomic scale, identifying elements and isotopes, and probing nano-scale structure.

To avoid the subject material being exposed to Earth's atmosphere and reacting with its oxygen, the ion beam cored into the samples, extracting the beads from within them, and then taking care that the material was protected from our atmosphere. The samples were then subjected to a number of analysis techniques, including atom probe tomography, scanning-electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy.

"Even with the advanced techniques we used, these were very difficult measurements to make," said Ogliore.

The measurements told the team about the pressure, temperature and chemistry of the environment that the beads formed in. Indeed, their very existence is proof that the moon had explosive eruptions, "something like the fire fountains that you can see in Hawaii today," said Ogliore.

Yet the color, shape and chemical composition of the lunar glass beads are quite unlike their terrestrial counterparts.

The analysis showed that the glass beads are coated in a layer less than 100 nanometers thick, deposited on the beads as vapor condensed out of the volcanic clouds. As such, probing these nano-layers provides information about those volcanic clouds, from which we can learn more about lunar volcanism.

The nano-layers on the surface of the beads are not smooth, but feature a number of shapes and inhomogeneities described as "micromounds," "lathes," "plaques" and "blebs." The micromounds in particular have a base that is richer in iron than their upper surfaces. This iron gradient is connected to how the pressure in the volcanic plume rapidly decreased in the brief time that it took for the micromounds in the nano-layer to be deposited.

Both the black and orange beads studied in this analysis were recovered by the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 — the only mission to fly with a specialist geologist, Harrison Schmitt, on board — from the Taurus-Littrow Valley in Mare Serenitatis.

The black beads are abundant in zinc-sulfide nanocrystals, and thermochemical modeling of these beads indicates that hydrogen and sulfur were the major elements in the volcanic gas plumes that formed them. Meanwhile, the orange beads lack notable quantities of zinc-sulfide crystals. This suggests a change over time in the conditions of the volcanic eruption that produced the black and orange beads.

"It's like reading the journal of an ancient lunar volcanologist," said Ogliore.

Although the findings are only a small detail in the grand scheme of things, they take us a step closer to understanding the volcanic conditions that formed the Man in the Moon, and why that volcanism occurred in the first place.

The results were published online in April in the journal Icarus.

Offering considerably more authentic spacesuits than your local Spirit Halloween store, Chris Gilman's Global Effects is a one-stop shop for Hollywood directors, set decorators, and costume designers when it comes to projects requiring both Advanced Crew Escape Suit (ACES) gear or Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) suits.

"The company was started really in 1986 under the Diligent Dwarves name," Gilman, Global Effects' president, told Space.com. "In 1991, when we were doing 'Bram Stoker's Dracula,' I changed it to Global Effects because too many Hollywood people would call and ask, 'Hey, is Dopey there? Is Sleepy there?'"

For nearly 40 years, Gilman's Southern California prop and costume emporium has supplied spacesuits for movies like "Space Cowboys" "First Man," "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon."

The copmany has also dressed countless actors on the small screen, in series such as "From the Earth to the Moon," "For All Mankind" and "Space Force." If you’ve watched any space-based TV show, commercial, or big screen movie with space-bound voyagers, chances are it's featured a Global Effects suit.

The son of a Connecticut aerospace machinist and himself a skilled metal fabricator and welder, Gilman came to Hollywood in the '80s to work as a stuntman, prop designer and armorer. Gilman's meticulously constructed replica spacesuits are so accurate that they might fool NASA engineers, as extreme care, detail and research is put into each precision outfit.

"In our spacesuit collection for movies, we have replicas of pretty much every historic spacesuit that's been into space and many prototypes that were developed along the way," he notes. "All the Apollo suits, Gemini, Mercury. The only one I don’t think we have is a soft Gemini suit. And then we have our science fiction suits that we've created. I try to design those using a real element, but they can be pretty crazy. Like, we did an armored spacesuit that was in 'Firefly' and 'Serenity.' I think we have close to 300."

At Global Effects' warehouse headquarters, the aisles and shelves are brimming with an incredible selection of fashionable outer space gear patterned after actual NASA artifacts.

"We have Ryan Gosling's 'First Man' suit. A lot of our suits have been used in multiple projects. For our ACES suits, I've had Ron Perlman, Aaron Eckhart, Hillary Swank, Clint Eastwood, Jim Garner, Donald Sutherland, all of Aerosmith. Tons of people have worn our suits. We had Buzz Aldrin in one of our Apollo suits for 'The Late Show.' I almost put Al Bean in one of our suits, too," Gilman said.

"There was a BBC interview done with James May, and they asked too many astronaut questions and not enough artist questions, and the interview was cut short," he added. "I ended up dressing James May in an Apollo suit in a parking lot in Texas. That was kind of fun."

There are restrictions on renting these special suits, and the general public can’t just drop by and walk out the door with one. You must have liability insurance and replacement insurance. A general homeowners' policy is not going to cover a spacesuit.

"The real EMU spacesuits have 19,000 parts, and I've heard figures of $12-15 million per suit ,and that was figured by the entire program divided by the number of suits they delivered to NASA. Our suits have about 1,600 custom-made parts and cost about $130,000 to produce. I tell producers that, for 1% the cost, you get 99% the look. I've had our ACES suits and EMUs next to real ones, and I've had a number of NASA personnel come up and think that the one that was theirs was ours, and they're shocked."

What drives Gilman nuts about inauthentic spacesuits, and what does Hollywood often goof up in its attempt to depict astronauts in their signature wardrobes?

"The general public doesn't understand that a full spacesuit is a personal spacecraft," Gilman explained. "It has to be pressured. It's only 4.3 pounds per square inch, but when you pressurize a suit for the first time and it's cracking and popping and straining on the bench, you kind of turn away expecting something to let go. The biggest mistake I see is not pressurizing the suit."

"The other one is lights inside the helmet," he added. "That makes me crazy. Ridley Scott in 'Alien' is one of the first to do this. He's filming at night with cameras that are shooting film that couldn’t shoot in very low light, and you want to see actors in there. Since then, we’ve got digital cameras you can use by lighting a scene with a match. We do our best to keep the suits light, but like on our EMUs, it's Teflon fabric and it's so bloody heavy. The new 'Fantastic Four' movie has some interesting-looking suits. But you wouldn't have straps or shoulder things hanging out, because they’re going to get caught inside a spacecraft."

With so many spacesuits in his inventory, one wonders exactly what Hollywood designs Gilman favors.

"I probably like '2001' the best," he said. "I think the suits were quite iconic and handsome. I actually had in my possession a real one for about nine months, and we patterned it and made replicas. A friend of mine owns the original red Bowman’s helmet from '2001,' so we were going to make some replicas of that. I like the fact we got to use the Mark III suit in 'Deep Impact.' It was nice that the director went with that suit. We were working on 'Armageddon' at the same time, and it was funny being in the middle and looking at the two. A friend of mine said the physics in 'Armageddon' are only slightly more realistic than The Beatles' 'Yellow Submarine.' I love that."