A week ago, Artemis II launched to the Moon, weighing 2,600 metric tons. But just a hundredth of a percent of that payload determined everything about the trip: the humans on board.
You will have seen the headlines about the record-breaking distances travelled and the “sci-fi”-like images snapped. But my favourite bits are the parts—often under the radar—that are genuinely human.
One moment I loved was when they were about to start the lunar observation period. The crew has spent three years training to observe the Moon during the seven hours of the fly-by, learning geology, travelling to Iceland, studying charts, and practising on the bespoke software that would cue their observations with military precision. Less than an hour before starting their meticulously-timed programme, astronaut Christina Koch called down to Mission Control: “Hey Jenny, just to make absolutely sure that we start observation time as expected, we are showing in [task software] Optimus that observation time starts in about 15 minutes, and in [another system] LTP that our first target starts in about 29minutes. Can you confirm that you’d like us to start Discussion #1 in 29 minutes at 19:00 GMT?” To which Mission Control replied, “Christina, we are tracking that Discussion #1 should start at 18:45, that’s 15 minutes from now” (see 1:32:40). The astronauts nearly missed their cue by 14 minutes—two craters’ worth of data out of 35 targets! We’ve all been there having the wrong time in our calendar, although not 250,000 miles from Earth with millions watching. Thankfully they were saved by having the humility to check.
During lunar observation, the mission became even more human—intentionally so. Our eyes are better than cameras at picking up colour, at noticing the way images change as the angle of light changes, and—because we have two eyes—at seeing depth and topography. So while the astronauts took thousands of photos, the research team got much more scientific understanding by hearing them describe in words what they saw. They paired up at the tiny windows for this task, which they reported meaningfully improved the quality of what they observed. “Look Mom” is a skill we practise from childhood for a reason. We see more when someone else helps us notice the world around us—or in this case, the worlds beyond us.
These precision instruments—the human eye and brain—do have some quirks, though. True, our lenses don’t fog up like telescope eyepieces or scratch or get fingerprints, but they do get tired. Initially, NASA blocked just five minutes for the pair to observe each crater. During training they realised this was too intense, so they increased to eight minutes, and had the astronauts pairs swap off every hour. Yes: these super high-performance, highly selected NASA astronauts had to have accommodation for their humanness. May this be a lesson to all of us who have worked beyond our capacity—those back-to-back meetings, those conferences without breaks, those “one more email” moments: giving a task enough time is actually really important to get it right, and to ensure that the glorious machine actually doing the work—the human—remains healthy long enough to complete the objective. I was impressed that NASA did not tell the astronauts to strive harder; they instead respected the human limits, and told their science team to prioritise fewer craters to observe.
As the humans travelled around the Moon, they described what they saw — evocatively: the twin craters that look like a snowman; the dusting on the craters that looked like snow; the darker patch (Mare) that bulges like a healing wound. I usually thought of science as being about measurements, but I realised, listening to them, that the real frontiers of science have been about description. Description is about finding the right words. At one point, the crew were so amazed by what they saw they joked down to Mission Control, “Can you come up with a list of another twenty superlatives?” As the Artemis II crew made clear, science and exploration are not just about seeing and measuring things for yourself; it’s about sharing that experience with others. And what’s the medium of sharing science, or any other human experience? The humanities. I hope in future missions, astronauts will study poetry, literature and art alongside geology. If you need more evidence that this is a good idea, many astronauts actually take up painting when they return to Earth, to capture those impressions that photos couldn’t quite do.
One of the highlights of this week was their viewing of a solar eclipse. But it almost had a huge hiccup—to look at an eclipse, you need to look right at the Sun, which can burn your retina. So just like on Earth, you need eye protection. But seeing a solar eclipse wasn’t really in the plan until the exact launch date was confirmed. Just a few weeks before the launch, someone at NASA realised “oh my gosh we need eclipse glasses!”, rummaged through a cupboard, and found leftover public engagement glasses from the 2024 eclipse event. Surely these paper eclipse glasses were the cheapest piece of scientific kit on the mission—and led to my favourite photo of the crew!
The biological limits and needs of the humans on board have really come through the mission. Moreover these four super charismatic, likeable astronauts have also been able to share why human exploration is so different from robotic missions. Every press conference, journalists and members of the public want to know, as Victor Glover put it, “how it feels.” The “Moon Joy” that they and the team on the ground have been expressing through their smiles, thumbs ups, hugs, tears, fist pumps, and humour has been infectious; the whole team is having so much fun!
I loved Christina Koch’s reflection on what she will miss most from the expedition: “I will miss this camaraderie. I will miss being this close, with this many people, with a common mission, getting to work hard every day, across hundreds of thousands of miles with the team on the ground… We are close like brothers and sisters.”
It’s not just me that was more moved by the people than the rocket science. Commander Reid Wiseman reflected that for him, his early career was first about flying and then about space. Now, it’s about family.
Reid cares greatly about the people exploring space. He’s made a decision to have all four astronauts fly the vehicle, not just him and the official pilot Victor Glover. I thought that decision was because he’s a nice, inclusive team leader. But he really wants to prove, technically, that you don’t need to be a test pilot to be a mission commander in the future. Removing that constraint opens up who can go into space, allowing more diverse skillsets and a broader pool of recruits into this new “Golden Age” of space exploration. I have seen many “diversity” programmes fail because they don’t get what Reid Wiseman gets; you can’t just say, “let’s have more ethnically diverse people or more women.” You have to make sure that biased barriers to entry are also removed, whether they are experience or certain favoured personality traits.
NASA’s mission is to “explore the unknown in air and space, innovate for the benefit of humanity, and inspire the world through discovery.” When asked how to inspire, the crew said to just do it. Or as Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen said in a message to kids, “All you have to do on any given day is do your best. And find joy in your day, and try to contribute in a meaningful and positive way. And that’s it. We as humans put too much pressure on ourselves looking for perfection. If you look at what we are doing out here, it is far from perfection, but we are getting it done.”
Artemis II will splash down near San Diego in a few hours. In their luggage will be tiny SD cards with thousands of images we will get to see in the coming months, and trays of cell samples; in their spacecraft will be system data to analyse and refine; in their bodies will be more saliva for scientists to measure; in their minds will be the wonders and impressions of this magical week at the Moon; and back in Houston are the next astronauts waiting to jump aboard Artemis III.
Here’s going to the moon and back, and back, and back, and back…
Liz
Aabservations 