“The only source of illumination on the Moon will be Earthshine, which is a different spectrum,” Deutsch said in a presentation last month at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. “How does that affect the perception of color and tone?”
Crew members summarized their observations in regular updates radioed to Mission Control on Monday. They also recorded more detailed verbal descriptions aboard the spacecraft and were tasked with making drawings and annotations to accompany their photographs. This data will return to Earth when Orion returns on Friday.
“We tell the crew that their verbal descriptions will actually be the monumental scientific data set of this mission, and that’s because, as humans, the crew provides critical perceptual context that simply cannot be replicated with robotic sensors,” Deutsch said. “The crew has spatial awareness and perception and has the ability to react and adapt to what they see in an instant.”
This rapid perception allowed the astronauts to see several brief flashes of light, each a fraction of a second, on the dark side of the Moon. The flashes occurred when small fragments of cosmic material, or micrometeoroids, impacted the lunar surface.
“It’s a bright spot,” Hansen said. “I would suspect there were many more… it’s just a momentary, colorless flash, about the size of a star, and it really only lasts milliseconds, half a second at most.”
This didn’t surprise Neal. “It’s a reminder that the surface is continually bombarded, and this is something we have tried to monitor,” he said.
Lunar impact flashes are usually visible through telescopes on Earth. Astronomers were watching the Moon as Artemis II approached on Monday, and if scientists can correlate their own observations with those of astronauts, they will be able to get a better idea of how many impacts are missed by ground-based telescopes. Limiting the number of impact events will be important as engineers design shielding for a future lunar base.
