More than 50 years after the first human flight around the Moon, Artemis astronauts will repeat the feat on Monday and use the most basic instrument to study it: their eyes.
Despite technological advances since the Apollo missions, NASA still relies on the eyesight of its astronauts to learn more about the Moon.
“The human eye is basically the best camera that can or will ever exist,” said Kelsey Young, principal scientist on the Artemis 2 mission. AFP.
“The number of receptors in the human eye far exceeds what a camera is capable of.”
Although modern cameras may be superior to human eyesight in some ways, “the human eye is really good at color, it’s really good at context, and it’s also really good at photometric observations,” Young said.
Humans can understand how lighting changes surface details, such as how angled lighting reveals texture but reduces visible color.
In the blink of an eye, humans can detect a subtle change in color and understand how lighting changes the contours of a landscape like the surface of the Moon, details that are scientifically useful but difficult to determine from photos or videos.
Artemis 2 astronaut Victor Glover, who pilots the Orion spacecraft, said before liftoff this week that the eyes are a “magic instrument.”
Field scientists
To make the most of their proximity to the Moon, the four members of the Artemis 2 crew underwent more than two years of training.
Young said the goal is to turn astronauts into “field scientists” through a combination of classroom lessons, geological expeditions to Iceland and Canada and multiple simulated flybys of the Moon, much like the mission they are on.
The three American astronauts — Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Glover and Mission Specialist Christina Koch — as well as Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, all had to memorize the “Big 15” of the Moon, or the 15 characteristics of the Moon that will allow them to orient themselves.
Using an inflatable moon globe, they practiced seeing how the angle of the sun changed the colors and textures of the lunar surface, perfecting their observation and note-taking skills for the big moment.
“I can tell you, they’re excited and they’re ready,” Young said with a smile.
“The size of a basketball”
The mission of the Artemis astronauts is to study certain lunar sites and phenomena within the framework of 10 objectives chosen by NASA and classified in order of priority according to scientific interest.
During the flight over the Moon, which will last several hours, the crew will have to observe the celestial body with the naked eye, using on-board cameras.
Noah Petro, director of NASA’s Planetary Geology Laboratory, said AFP that the Moon will, in the eyes of astronauts, be “the size of a basketball held at arm’s length”.
“The question that interests me most is whether they will be able to see color on the lunar surface,” Petro said.
“I’m not talking about rainbow colors, but you know, dark browns or beige colors, because that tells us something about composition and it tells us something about the history of the Moon.”
David Kring of the Lunar and Planetary Institute said AFP he doesn’t expect any earth-shattering discoveries because of the multiple lunar probes and high-resolution images of the Moon taken from the Apollo missions.
Still, “having astronauts describe what they see… This is a phenomenon that at least two generations of people on Earth have never heard of before,” he said.
The Artemis 2 flyby will be broadcast live by NASA, with the exception of a period when the spacecraft will be behind the moon.
“Just listening to their descriptions of practicing in mission simulations…It gives me chills,” Young said.
“I am absolutely convinced that these four people will deliver incredible descriptions.”
