Up Next Four people saw something yesterday which no one has ever seen before – the far side of the moon.Then Donald Trump phoned them.On the sixth day of Nasa’s Artemis II, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen swung around our celestial neighbour.
While doing so, they did yet another record-breaking thing – going farther than any human has ever travelled in history, at 248,655 miles.The trip ended with a 12-minute phone call from the US President, who congratulated them for breaking the record set by Apollo 13 in 1970.One of these minutes, however, was spent sitting (or floating in the crew’s case) in silence after Trump explained the American people are ‘proud’.
The astronauts stared back at the live feed camera, twirling the microphone in microgravity, while blinking and occasionally nodding.After a long silence, the astronauts ask mission control if the president is still on the line.‘I am, yes,’ the president said.
Trump added: ‘Today you’ve made history and made all America really proud, incredibly proud. We have a lot of things to be proud of lately, but this is, there’s nothing like what you’re doing.‘Humans have really never seen anything quite like what you’re doing in a manned spacecraft.’ Trump invited the crew to the Oval Office, saying he can’t wait to get their autographs.‘This is big, this is really big stuff.
The whole world is talking about it… I’ve been pretty busy also, as you know, but I will absolutely find the time and we’ll get together.’ What did the Artemis II crew see? For 41 minutes, it was just four humans and the moon when their comms dropped off because the moon blocked radio signals from reaching any of the eight billion people down below.Embraced by the lunar gravity, the spacecraft the crew dubbed Intergetry then reappeared behind the lonely grey orb.Then they saw a blue and green crescent – the Earth – appear from their window as they witnessed a solar eclipse.
Glover said: ‘You can actually see a majority of the moon.It is the strangest-looking thing that you can see so much on the surface.’ In 2016, Wiseman posted on X that he dreamt he did a lunar flyby.‘Been in that post-vivid-dream-that-wasn’t-real funk all morning,’ he said.
Writing yesterday, he wrote: ‘All I feel is gratitude for this experience.’ Astronauts name moon ‘bright spot’ after mission commander’s late wife As they drifted through the abyss of space, the crew decided to name two craters on the moon.One would be named after Integrity.The other, Caroll, is in honour of Wiseman’s wife, who died in 2020 of cancer.
The ‘Caroll’ crater is just northwest of the moon’s Glushko crater.Nasa’s mission control responded to their transmission: ‘Integrity and Carroll Crater, loud and clear.’ While David Bowie once sang that space is a lonely place, it was anything but aboard the deep space capsule, Orion.The crew hugged, cried and cheered as they marked the historic moment.
Up Next The far side of the moon, popularly called the ‘dark side’, is the hemisphere that never faces Earth.Among the sights the crew observed – and there were many – was a new angle of the moon that captured the Orientale Basin, a 600-mile-wide crater that can be seen only partly from Earth.The moon’s famous dark splotches, which are actually ancient lava flows, were clearly visible.
Wiseman commented on the live feed: ‘Orientale just looks so dynamic right now.It’s very three-dimensional.’ Trending Now Woman who dropped a log on a shelf in The Range wanted by police UK 1 day ago By Alex Daniel Trump drops F-bomb and says 'Praise to Allah' in wildest social media post yet Does Trump's wild F-bomb online rant show that cracks are appearing? Teenagers clash with police at Easter Egg hunt at park and shopping centre They even saw five small meteors flick the already pockmarked lunar surface.Behind them, they spotted Mars and Saturn.
Today will be a rest day for the Artemis II crew.Slowly, Earth’s gravity will tug the Orion back towards the planet.Nasa administrator Jared Isaacman said on X: ‘Before they left, they said they hoped this mission would be forgotten, but it will be remembered as the moment people started to believe that America can once again do the near-impossible and change the world.
‘Congratulations to this incredible crew and the entire NASA team, our international and commercial partners, but this mission isn’t over until they’re under safe parachutes, splashing down into the Pacific.’ Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected] more stories like this, check our news page.MORE: Artemis II crew ‘in tears’ as they travel further from Earth than any human has ever been MORE: There’s a chance aliens are hitching a ride on the moons of rogue planets MORE: Artemis II astronauts sensed burning smell coming from toilet Comments Add as preferred source News Updates Stay on top of the headlines with daily email updates.
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