the Orientale basin<\/a>, a 3.8-billion-year-old impact basin with three enormous concentric rings. Astronaut Reid Wiseman reported seeing brownish tones in the outer part of Orientale, although his colleague Victor Glover didn\u2019t quite see the same colouration. Brown is becoming something of a theme for today. The Moon, to human eyes that are closer to it, might appear more brown and less grey than we Earth-bound observers see.<\/p>\nTo try to keep their eyes attuned to subtle colour differences on the lunar surface, the astronauts have put a T-shirt across one of the capsule\u2019s windows to help block light. They\u2019re calling it a shroud. It did, however, cause more condensation than they would have liked, so the astronauts have been using a condensation hose to try to dry things up. \u2014 Alexandra Witze<\/p>\n
Updated 6 April 2026, 4.33 p.m. CDT (Houston time)<\/p>\n
Nature correspondent Alexandra Witze is with the mission scientists today at Johnson Space Center in Houston. She asked them how they\u2019re feeling and what they\u2019re most excited for the astronauts to observe on the Moon. Check out this video, put together from Alex\u2019s interviews. We\u2019re gonna be crying a lot over here too, scientists.<\/p>\n
Updated 6 April 2026, 4.19 p.m. CDT (Houston time)<\/p>\n
Reader question: The astronauts are seeing parts of the Moon that the human eye hasn\u2019t seen before. Why?<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve put together a graphic to answer this one. Apollo astronauts travelled closer to the lunar surface than the Artemis II astronauts are. This means that the Apollo crews saw only small swathes of the lunar surface. They also saw the far side in darkness because their mission trajectory was designed to land astronauts on the near side during daylight. <\/p>\n
So the Artemis II astronauts are indeed seeing parts of the far side, illuminated, for the first time in human history. Approximately 21% of the far side\u2019s disk (including the Orientale impact basin) is in sunlight during today\u2019s fly-by. The rest of the Moon that they are seeing illuminated today is its much more familiar near side.<\/p>\n
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Image credit: NASA<\/p>\n
Updated 6 April 2026, 4.03 p.m. CDT (Houston time)<\/p>\n
The astronauts have been switching spots at the capsule windows. Reid Wiseman and Jeremy Hansen were the first to do observations and take photos. Then it was Christina Koch and Victor Glover\u2019s turn. Now, they\u2019re about to switch back.<\/p>\n
The astronauts have three cameras on board: two Nikon D5 DSLRs, which are the workhorses of spaceflight photography, and one Nikon Z9, a newer mirrorless camera that was added at nearly the last moment. These automatically take three exposures for every press of the button. The first is an exposure that the Artemis II team members think is correct for the lighting conditions in that moment, the second is one that they think will be underexposed and the third is one that they think will be overexposed \u2014 to be sure one of the images will turn out well.<\/p>\n
They are using a 400-millimetre lens to get as much detail as possible of the lunar disk. The astronauts observe the Moon in pairs, one photographing the surface while the other observes with the naked eye. They have trained to recognize basic geological features of the Moon, including the massive Orientale impact basin that is a major focus of today\u2019s studies because it has never been observed fully by the human eye before. \u2014 Alexandra Witze<\/p>\n
Updated 6 April 2026, 3.18 p.m. CDT (Houston time)<\/p>\n
Reader question: Do the astronauts have science in their backgrounds?<\/p>\n
Some of them do, yes. Mission specialist Christina Koch is an engineer who worked at scientific field stations in Greenland and Antarctica. Mission specialist Jeremy Hansen has a master\u2019s degree in physics and worked at the underwater Aquarius laboratory off the coast of Florida, which is meant to emulate deep-space flight. (Incidentally, although this is Hansen\u2019s first flight to space, Koch holds a number of spaceflight records.)<\/p>\n
Reid Wiseman, the commander, set a record for science in orbit when he and a colleague performed 82 hours of research on the International Space Station during a single week in 2014. <\/p>\n
The fourth astronaut, pilot Victor Glover, is a Navy aviator and test pilot. \u2014 Alexandra Witze<\/p>\n
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The Artemis II crew during a training session at Johnson Space Center in Houston.Credit: NASA\/James Blair<\/p>\n
Updated 6 April 2026, 2.51 p.m. CDT (Houston time)<\/p>\n
The Artemis II lunar science team is getting what they were hoping for. On board the Orion capsule, the astronauts have observed craters at the north and south poles. Colour differences continue to be a theme: \u201cThe more I look at the Moon, the browner and browner it looks,\u201d one of the astronauts said.<\/p>\n
Astronaut and pilot Victor Glover is describing some challenges in looking from his dim laptop to the bright Moon and back down again, all while juggling logistics to capture the grandeur of the moment. \u2014 Alexandra Witze<\/p>\n
Updated 6 April 2026, 2.34 p.m. CDT (Houston time)<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been fortunate enough to gain access to the \u2018science evaluation room\u2019, a brand-new workspace in the main mission control building at Johnson Space Center in Houston. This is the kind of thing that sounds really bureaucratic, but in the extremely hierarchical world of NASA human spaceflight, it\u2019s a big deal for science to have its own space. There\u2019s a cluster of science specialists working together here to feed information and research to a top \u2018science officer\u2019 \u2014 planetary scientist Kelsey Young \u2014 who has a seat in the primary mission control room. (They don\u2019t let reporters in that room generally.)<\/p>\n
The mood here is quiet, tense and full of anticipation. There was no celebratory moment to mark the start of the lunar fly-by \u2014 just a bunch of scientists focusing on their display screens with visualizations of the lunar surface and the capsule trajectory.<\/p>\n
Christina Koch, one of the astronauts, told mission control that they were comparing the brightnesses of Earth and the Moon. Young noted that as the astronauts\u2019 eyes adjust, more features might become visible. The crew has turned down lights in the capsule to help their eyes adapt to darkness.<\/p>\n
The astronauts have reported seeing green and brown colours in the Aristarchus region of the Moon\u2019s near side. That\u2019s a part of the Moon that astronomers can see from Earth, but the report of colour variations caused an excited murmur in the room. The scientists are keen to have any colour reports like this from up close at the lunar surface. \u2014 Alexandra Witze<\/p>\n
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Science officer Kelsey Young monitors Artemis II operations from a console inside NASA\u2019s mission control in Houston.Credit: NASA\/Bill Stafford<\/p>\n
Updated 6 April 2026, 2.16 p.m. CDT (Houston time)<\/p>\n
This morning, reporters \u2014 including yours truly \u2014 visited mission control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. This is the nerve centre of the Artemis II mission. And it\u2019s the room where the flight director and the capcom (the astronaut designated to communicate with the Orion capsule) sit, as well as the room that holds all those consoles you\u2019ve seen in film documentaries. Huge display screens showed the countdown to various mission milestones, including splashdown on 10 April.<\/p>\n
We were there when mission control broadcast a message from legendary Apollo astronaut Jim Lovell to the Artemis II crew, as they woke this morning, the day of their lunar fly-by. \u201cWelcome to my old neighbourhood,\u201d said Lovell, who piloted the 1968 Apollo 8 mission that was the first to fly humans around the Moon, just as Artemis II is doing today. \u201cDon\u2019t forget to enjoy the view,\u201d he said. \u201cGood luck, godspeed, from all of us here on the good Earth.\u201d Lovell recorded the message before he died on 7 August last year. \u2014 Alexandra Witze<\/p>\n
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NASA staff members were posing for a photo this morning as Nature correspondent Alexandra Witze visited mission control.Credit: Alexandra Witze\/Nature<\/p>\n
Updated 6 April 2026, 2.07 p.m. CDT (Houston time)<\/p>\n
As the Artemis II crew set their distance record from Earth, they made a request: to name some \u201crelatively fresh craters on the Moon that have not been previously named\u201d. In particular, they suggested names for two craters that they observed from Orion\u2019s windows this morning and that were originally pointed out to them by the science team. They suggested naming the first, north of the massive Orientale basin on the Moon\u2019s far side, Integrity, after their spacecraft. The second, on the Moon\u2019s near side\u2013far side border, they asked to name Carroll, after commander Reid Wiseman\u2019s wife, who passed away in 2020. During certain times of transit, Carroll would be visible on Earth.<\/p>\n
Updated 6 April 2026, 1.51 p.m. CDT (Houston time)<\/p>\n
The lunar fly-by has begun. I’m in the science evaluation room for the Artemis II mission, where flowers just got delivered for science officer Kelsey Young, from her mother. NASA science head Nicola Fox is also in the house.<\/p>\n
Team leader Marie Henderson just told the assembled scientists that they needed to focus on getting their work done while also appreciating the historic nature of the moment. \u201cThere\u2019s going to be a lot of excitement today,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Then she went around asking the group leaders in the room to give her a \u2018go\u2019 for fly-by. One by one, they all polled \u2018go\u2019. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are go for lunar flyby,\u201d Henderson said.\u2014 Alexandra Witze<\/p>\n
Updated 6 April 2026, 1.05 p.m. CDT (Houston time)<\/p>\n
Artemis astronauts set record for distance travelled from Earth by humans<\/p>\n
The Artemis II crew has just set a record for the farthest humans have ever travelled from Earth. They have surpassed the record of Apollo 13, set in 1970, of 248,655 statute miles (400,171 kilometres) from our home planet. (Apollo 13 set that record after it suffered an explosion on the way to the Moon, which forced the crew to abort their planned landing and instead slingshot around the far side of the Moon.)<\/p>\n
Some scientists and NASA folks will tell you that the distance record doesn\u2019t really matter. It is, after all, something of an artifice \u2014 there is nothing fundamentally different about the environment that the Artemis II astronauts will be passing through, thousands of kilometres above the Moon\u2019s surface, to the one that Apollo astronauts did, tens to hundreds of kilometres above the surface. But it is a moment to mark in human history, in which people travel farther from planet Earth than ever before.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will continue our journey even farther into space before Mother Earth succeeds in pulling us back to everything that we hold dear,\u201d said one of the astronauts. \u201cBut we most importantly choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long lived.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later today, the Artemis II crew will reach their farthest distance from Earth, of 252,760 statute miles (406,778 kilometres) \u2014 before their trajectory takes them back towards our home planet. \u2014 Alexandra Witze<\/p>\n
Updated 6 April 2026, 12.37 p.m. CDT (Houston time)<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s science activities will unfold according to a \u2018lunar targeting plan\u2019 drawn up by mission scientists. Essentially, the astronauts trained to be able to recognize major geological features on the surface of the Moon<\/a> from many angles. Once Orion set its final course to the Moon, over the past few days, team scientists have updated predictions for what the astronauts will see. The lunar targeting plan lists the features the scientists want the astronauts to observe.<\/p>\nAs Orion approaches the Moon, the astronauts will first see features on the lunar near side, which faces Earth and is familiar to amateur astronomers. Those include the bright Aristarchus crater, one of the most brilliant features on the Moon. As the capsule flies around the back of the Moon, the crew will get better views of features on the little-seen far side, such as the magnificent multi-ringed Orientale impact basin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"View of the Moon (and a sliver of Earth) from the Orion capsule just before the crew went…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568836,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[61531,1159,1160,16492,79,7139],"class_list":{"0":"post-568835","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-astronomy-and-astrophysics","9":"tag-humanities-and-social-sciences","10":"tag-multidisciplinary","11":"tag-planetary-science","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-scientific-community"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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