During the Artemis II lunar flyby on Monday, the astronauts onboard took thousands of photos and made geological observations of around 35 targets on the far side of the moon. The astronauts were the first to see the far side of the moon from that perspective, and the data they collected will help planetary scientists here on Earth.
At the University of Central Florida, planetary scientist Addie Dove is preparing to send an instrument to the lunar surface as early as 2028. Lunar-VISE aims to understand Gruithuisen Domes – a puzzling geological structure on the moon and a structure that the mission observed. Scientists have no idea how it was formed. Lunar-VISE could unlock that mystery.
Dove and her team plan to use images from the Artemis II flyby to maximize the data they can collect.
“Thinking about some of the viewing angles and some of the way they described what they were able to see at different times on the surface, that's really interesting to think about when we're thinking about our operations,” Dove said. “We're primarily a lander and a rover, but we do plan to take some observations as we're orbiting the moon before we land, and then we're taking images as we descend.”
Dove said the trajectory the mission has taken will be very impactful on the Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS. The insights gathered from the journey will facilitate an easier journey for American companies’ lunar science payloads.
“The way they did the observations, and thinking about how they flew over, and some of the trajectories that we might be on during our initial flybys on our mission, and just sort of the impetus that's coming out of [the Artemis II] mission, I do think will be really impactful going forward,” Dove said.
A lunar science team at the Johnson Space Center in Houston spoke in real time with the Artemis II astronauts as they made their observations. This combination of science and engineering is new for lunar exploration. Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist at Washington University in St. Louis, who is not affiliated with Lunar-VISE, said that collaboration is a positive thing to see.“It’s the real-time discovery they're doing which helps us be there with them [and is] hugely helped by the folks in the science back room at Mission Control,” Byrne said. “We have folks on console in Mission Control who are scientists as well. That marrying of the kind of exploration, engineering side of things, and the science side of things is not something we saw to the same extent in Apollo, but it undergirds much of what's happening in Artemis.”
The images from the flyby are captivating the public as NASA began releasing them Tuesday, but the picture would be incomplete without the Artemis II crew’s visual survey of the moon. And they're also inspiring brand new questions for up-and-coming planetary scientists.
“When we train students, we tell them, ‘you can take all the photos you want’, but a really important part of any kind of field-based exercise of any kind is to also narrate what you see,” Byrne said. “We would usually have students write stuff in their journals or notebooks and sketch what they see.
He said the camera gives an objective view, but “the eye is such an amazingly sensitive instrument, much more than any camera we have.”
The Artemis II crew officially began their trip home at the conclusion of Monday’s flyby. Their capsule will punch through Earth’s atmosphere Friday evening before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, signalling the end of the nearly 10-day mission that took the crew farther into space than any other humans.
