NASA astronaut and Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman peers out of one of the Orion spacecraft's main cabin windows, looking back at Earth, as the crew travels towards the Moon on April 4.NASA/Getty Images
Throughout its journey around the moon, the Artemis II mission has frequently drawn comparisons to an early predecessor – Apollo 8.
That flight, in December, 1968, marked the first time humans circled the moon, which would serve as a prelude to a lunar landing the following year. It is the mission that produced the iconic “Earthrise” photo, which showed our planet suspended above the moon’s horizon and sparked a paradigm shift in how we view our place as a species.
Like the crew of Apollo 8, the four Artemis II astronauts – Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen – have ventured into lunar space to test the viability of their spacecraft, dubbed Integrity, and set the stage for moon landings yet to come. They lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday.
But Monday evening, as the crew rounds the far side of the moon and begins heading toward home, a different Apollo-era mission will be on everyone’s mind.
A view of the moon taken by the Artemis II crew before going to sleep on flight day 5.The Associated Press
Apollo 13 was the ill-fated flight that turned into a daring rescue and a narrowly averted disaster in April, 1970. Along the way, NASA astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert travelled farther from Earth than humans have ever gone – an unplanned record that has persisted for 56 years, until now.
Based on the latest figures from NASA, at 7:07 p.m. ET, the equations of celestial mechanics predict that Integrity will be about 406,778 kilometres from Earth. That exceeds the Apollo 13 record by about 6,606 km, which means Col. Hansen and his crewmates will have truly gone where no one has gone before.
NASA said on Sunday that the Artemis II crewed mission will reach record distances from Earth, surpassing a mark set during Apollo 13 more than five decades ago.
Reuters
Whether the Artemis II astronauts will have much time to think about the milestone is another matter.
At that moment, they will be in the home stretch of a 5½-hour campaign of intense lunar observations to get everything they can out of viewing a part of the moon that observers on Earth do not see.
“We’ve got a jam-packed plan for them,” said Kelsey Young, the mission’s lunar science lead, during a press briefing on Sunday at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Dr. Young said that the crew has a list of 35 targets to examine in detail in hopes that they can spot and describe subtle differences in hue and brightness that exceed what is already known from remote sensing by a robotic orbiter.
The crew will also be using a battery of powerful cameras and will be in communication with scientists as they work to optimize their results.
Asked how many photos the mission might yield, Dr. Young said, “We expect thousands.”
How the Artemis II mission is rekindling humanity’s long love affair with the moon
It was a very different situation in 1970 when the crew of Apollo 13 was preoccupied not with science but with survival.
The mission was to be the third to land on the moon, with commander Jim Lovell – who also flew on Apollo 8 – and lunar module pilot Fred Haise set to explore a hilly expanse on the lunar surface called the Fra Mauro highlands.
Command module pilot Jack Swigert had been given his assignment only one day before the April 11 launch. He was the replacement for Ken Mattingly, who had not been cleared of the possibility that he might develop German measles, after training with another astronaut who’d turned out to have the virus.
Things went awry two days into the mission. It was the outbound leg of the trip, minutes after Capt. Lovell had completed a TV broadcast for viewers on Earth, when the crew heard a loud bang followed by the spacecraft’s alarm system.
The crew of NASA's Artemis II mission contacted Earth via video on Thursday to talk about their experience just after completing the translunar injection burn that is leading them towards the moon.
Reuters
While still assessing the problem, Capt. Swigert, and then Capt. Lovell both uttered the now famous phrase, “Houston we’ve had a problem.”
In the minutes that followed, the extent of the crew’s jeopardy became apparent. One of the oxygen tanks on the spacecraft had exploded – something that would later be traced to an electrical short. As a result, the spacecraft was losing both its air supply and power. A moon landing was now off the table. The question was whether the crew could get back to Earth alive.
With power teetering, the idea of turning around was ruled out. The momentum of the spacecraft was toward the moon and it would take a lot of energy to reverse that. Instead, mission controllers opted for an engine burn that would send the crew coasting around the moon and back, just as Artemis II is doing now. During the rest of the trip the crew would use their lunar lander as a lifeboat, stretching out its batteries as long as possible, and then transfer back to the command module just before re-entering Earth’s atmosphere.
There were other problems to solve on the fly and the return flight was touch and go to the finish. A key moment came when mission control decided a second burn was needed to adjust the crew’s trajectory enough to bring them back to Earth about 12 hours sooner and to a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, the preferred landing site.
Canada’s Jeremy Hansen cheered on by fellow Artemis II astronauts on rookie space mission
This second burn, which came two hours after closest approach to the moon, is the one that shot Apollo 13 past the distance it would have gone had it landed as intended. The unexpected distance record was set on April 15, 1970.
Apollo 13’s safe return, now documented in numerous books and dramatized in film, stands as an enduring example of successful crisis management and ingenuity under pressure.
If all goes well, Artemis II’s record-breaking moment will be a more relaxed one.
All the same, the current generation of moon travellers spent their Sunday practising for emergencies, including a depressurization of the crew capsule, and the need to make repairs while in flight.
When the moon is the destination, the peril is real and the training never ends.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Capt. Fred Haise first uttered the now-famous phrase, “Houston we’ve had a problem here.” Capt. Jack Swigert said it first.