More than 50 years after humans first flew around the Moon, the 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 could exist or ever will exist,” said Kelsey Young, principal scientist for 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 vision in some ways, “the human eye is really good at color, and 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, for example 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 photographs or videos.
Artemis 2 astronaut Victor Glover, who pilots the Orion spacecraft, said before liftoff this week that the eyes were a “magical 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 was 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, just like the mission they are on.
The three American astronauts (Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Glover and Mission Specialist Christina Koch), along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, had to memorize the “Big 15” of the Moon, or the 15 features of the Moon that will allow them to orient themselves.
Using an inflatable lunar balloon, they practiced how the angle of the sun changed the colors and textures of the lunar surface, honing their observation and note-taking skills for the big moment.
“I can tell you they’re excited and ready,” Young said with a smile.
“About the size of a basketball”
The mission of the Artemis astronauts is to study certain lunar sites and phenomena as part of 10 objectives chosen by NASA and ranked in order of priority according to scientific interest.
During the flyby to the Moon, which will last several hours, the crew will have to observe the celestial body with the naked eye, together with the cameras they carry on board.
Noah Petro, head of NASA’s planetary geology laboratory, said AFP that the Moon will appear to astronauts “about the size of a basketball held at arm’s length.”
“The question that interests me most is whether they will be able to see colors on the lunar surface,” Petro said.
“I’m not talking about rainbow colors, but you know, dark browns or tan colors because that tells us something about the composition and it tells us something about the history of the Moon.”
David Kring of the Lunar and Planetary Institute said AFP Don’t expect any earth-shattering discoveries due to multiple lunar probes and high-resolution images of the Moon taken from the Apollo missions.
However, “having astronauts describe what they’re seeing… That’s something that at least two generations of people on Earth have never heard before,” he said.
The Artemis 2 flyby will be broadcast live by NASA, except during a period when the spacecraft is behind the moon.
“Just hearing the descriptions of their practice in mission simulations…gives me chills,” Young said.
“I am absolutely sure that these four people will offer incredible descriptions.”
