Crewed lunar flyby mission Artemis II, led by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), launched on April 1 and will splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego tomorrow around 5 p.m.
The Artemis II mission is a test flight for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft. Six days into the 10 day mission, the crew of four astronauts — Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen — traveled around the far side of the moon on the Orion spacecraft and made a partial orbit around the moon, setting the record for the farthest that humans have traveled from Earth. They are currently on the way back to Earth.
NASA provides a variety of resources for people to follow the Artemis II mission, including livestreams on NASA’s YouTube channel showing views from Orion, a constant stream of photos from the mission and the Artemis Real-time Orbit Website (AROW), an immersive visualization of “real-time telemetry from the Orion spacecraft.”
AP Physics 1 and AP Physics C teacher Daniel Rowe, who formerly interned for Boeing as a subcontractor for NASA, where he helped work on parts of the International Space Station (ISS) to support astronauts, follows “updates from the crew,” such as various issues that they have encountered.
“I think they could have made it better if they had taken better pictures or videos,” Rowe said. “What I’ve seen so far [has] not been the best quality, which is a little disappointing.”
Still, many greatly appreciate the new photos from space.
“This is our first time having humans outside of low Earth orbit since 1972, and we’re getting real photos from these astronauts,” space enthusiast Chloe Cassidy (11), who stays updated on Orion’s trajectory and watches astronaut interviews, said. “It’s just so cool to see, and I just love to imagine how it feels to look out the window and see that.”
The splashdown is predicted to occur “roughly between San Clemente Island and Catalina Island,” according to CBS News 8. The San Diego Air & Space Museum will be hosting an Artemis II Splashdown Family PJ Night Watch Party at the museum’s Edwin D. McKellar Pavilion of Flight, with activities starting at 4:30 p.m. The Fleet Science Center offers a splashdown viewing at the Giant Dome Theater, but tickets are already sold out.
According to CBS News 8, the splashdown will be difficult to spot with the naked eye because it will be high up and far from the coast. 50 miles off the San Diego coast, rescue boats and helicopters will be stationed to retrieve the crew members. Cassidy plans to watch the event in person at the San Diego Air & Space Museum’s watch party.
The splashdown will also be livestreamed on many platforms. Additionally, the Fleet Science Center will host an ARTEMIS Week celebration from April 9 to 11 for people to engage with NASA experts and limited-time exhibits related to Artemis II.
“It’s cool to be able to connect these global events to things that we can reach out and touch,” Rowe said. “Being a local where it’s happening is exciting because we like rooting for our hometown, and it’ll be cool to know that it happened here.”
The Artemis missions, each one planned to be incrementally more difficult than the last, aim to make scientific discoveries on the moon that surpass the Apollo missions and build a foundation for eventually sending a crewed mission to Mars, according to NASA.
“It’s important to note that the Apollo missions were done in a really different era with really different tolerances for risk and reward, because we were competing with Russia at the time,” Rowe said. “Today, we have very low tolerance for risk, even in space exploration. So what they did on this mission is not just a repeat of what Apollo did. They did it better. They did it safer.”
An actual lunar landing is planned for Artemis IV, which is set to take place in early 2028. NASA expects to begin building a moon base as part of Artemis V in late 2028.
Math 1 Honors and Calculus III and Linear Algebra teacher Abby Brown, who has “always been fascinated by space,” believes Artemis II signifies “the beginning of something new.”
“My parents were able to watch along with the world during the first voyages to the moon and experience that moment in history,” Brown said. “Throughout life, when one realizes that as a society we are experiencing something of historical significance, it is often negative, whereas the milestones created through the Artemis missions are positive and inspiring.”
On Monday, the day Artemis II completed its record-setting lunar flyby, Brown watched the historic moments live with one of her Math 1 Honors classes. She later rewatched some scenes with her Linear Algebra class and “[drew] a picture on the board that kind of showed the curves of how the moon [was] moving at the same time that Orion was moving.”
“I connected it to our class, because earlier in the semester, we had talked about collision points versus intersection points, where, when [we] have parametric curves, sometimes we’re looking for [whether] the curves cross, but other times we’re looking to see [if] they cross at the same time,” Brown said. “So this was a nice, real-world example of trying to find where things would actually be at the correct moment at the same time.”
Many notice increased conversations about space exploration in their communities.
“One of the really cool things is that we’re kind of getting a little bit of our societal fascination with space travel back,” Physics: Of the Universe, AP Physics 1 and AP Physics 2 teacher Eli Aghassi said.
Aghassi feels optimistic about the future of space travel, which he believes is important because it is “our frontier of exploration.”
“I’m hoping [this] means that I’m going to get to live to see us go to Mars, and that we’re going to do all these things that should have happened in the 1970s and 80s, but are now happening, hopefully,” Aghassi said.
Similarly, many students feel increased enthusiasm towards space exploration.
“I thought [the] coolest [was] the period of time when they were behind the moon and couldn’t actively reach Earth and when they could see an eclipse of the moon in front of the sun,” Linear Algebra student Collier Lawson (12) said. “I also think it’s really cool that people are farthest from Earth than they’ve ever been in all of time.”
Cassidy agrees.
“I’ve always wanted to do something related to space,” Cassidy said. “I’ve always wanted to be an astrophysicist, but this makes me really want to be an astronaut as well, even though it may be a little more far-fetched. I’ve been on Earth my whole life, and so have all of us, and it would just be so cool to go up and just see the whole Earth floating in space. It just sounds so cool.”
