A counter that kept climbing
The commander of NASA's Artemis II mission has described a tense stretch during the crew's flight around the moon, when he feared the spacecraft had overshot the point at which it was supposed to turn back toward Earth, Live Science reported.
Reid Wiseman and his three crewmates were expected to reach 219,667 nautical miles from Earth, which is 252,788 standard miles or 406,823 kilometers. That would be farther than any humans have traveled from their home planet. The turn-back was planned for the sixth day of the 10-day mission.
Speaking at the Starmus VIII festival in Tenerife, Spain, earlier this week, Wiseman said the odometer aboard the Integrity spacecraft kept rising after it passed that figure. He said he began to worry that something had gone terribly wrong.
Wiseman's account of the moment
Wiseman said mission control in Houston had told the crew that 219,667 nautical miles would be their maximum distance. "I was watching this number, and I saw it hit 219,667, and I thought, 'Great, this is the farthest we will be from Earth, and the next number I will see will be 219,666,'" he said.
Instead, about three minutes later, the display showed 219,668. "I was like. 'Huh? That's weird,'" Wiseman said. Roughly three minutes after that it read 219,669. "That was the moment that I felt real fear because I thought we had just gone too far," he said, adding that he was "very scared."
Then the counter began to drop. When it returned to 219,668 nautical miles, Wiseman said, "We're going home," and the crew cheered. "I knew there was a good chance we might make it," he added.
A fear the rest of the crew missed
According to the report, the other astronauts were occupied and did not notice Wiseman's concern. NASA astronauts Victor Glover and Christina Koch were at the window making science observations of the moon. Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen was sending reports to mission control.
Wiseman's account suggests the scare was brief and private, and it ended with the readout turning back downward as the spacecraft began its return.
Credit to the ground teams
In an interview with The Week Junior Science+Nature, a sister publication of Live Science, Wiseman credited NASA's Earth-based teams for the mission's success. "Getting home safely is a testament to the engineering rigor and the flight control teams back here on planet Earth," he said, calling them "the true heroes of this mission."
Artemis II launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 1. It was the first crewed flight of the Orion capsule and the first crewed trip to the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. The crew flew around the lunar far side and returned to Earth in nearly 10 days.
Nearly every moment of the crew's activities inside Orion was livestreamed, which drew heavy public interest, according to Live Science. Hansen, Glover and Wiseman were presented with the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication at Starmus VIII on Oct. 17.
