Artemis II astronauts make historic call to International Space Station after lunar flyby

HOUSTON (AP) – Fresh from their successful lunar flyby, the Artemis II astronauts made history again on Tuesday by speaking with friends aboard the International Space Station while travelling home from the moon, separated by hundreds of thousands of miles.

It was the first-ever radio connection between a spacecraft near the moon and another in Earth orbit. NASA's Apollo crews had no fellow travellers beyond the planet during the 1960s and 1970s, humanity's previous era of deep-space exploration.

Artemis II makes first moon-to-space-station call

"We have been waiting for this like you can't imagine," Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman called out.

The conversation was an especially happy reunion for Artemis II's Christina Koch and space station resident Jessica Meir, despite the 370,000-kilometre (230,000-mile) distance between them. In 2019, the pair carried out the world's first all-female spacewalk together outside the orbiting laboratory.

Koch told her "astro-sister" that she'd hoped to meet up with her again in space "but I never thought it would be like this – it's amazing."

"I'm so happy that we are back in space together," Meir replied, "even if we are a few miles apart."

Houston's Mission Control set up the celestial chat for the four lunar voyagers and the space station's four occupants: three from NASA and one from France.

Earth views and lunar science observations

Koch said she was struck not only by Earth's beauty, "but how much blackness there was around it."

"It just made it even more special. It truly emphasized how alike we are, how the same thing keeps every single person on planet Earth alive," she told the space station crew. "The specialness and preciousness of that really is emphasized" when viewing the home planet from the moon.

By late Tuesday afternoon, the Artemis II crew had transmitted more than 50 gigabytes of photographs and other data from Monday's lunar encounter, which established a new human distance record. Among the standout images was a photo of Earth setting, recalling Apollo 8's Earthrise image from 1968.

"While they are inspirational and, I think, allow all of us to really feel a little bit of what they were feeling, there's also a lot of science hidden inside of those images," said Kelsey Young, Mission Control's lead lunar scientist. "The conversations and the science lessons learned are just beginning."

In a debrief with Young, the astronauts said they had seen a stream of tiny flashes across the lunar surface, caused by cosmic debris striking the moon. The bursts lasted only milliseconds and happened, by chance, during Monday evening's total solar eclipse.

Young said it was still too early to determine whether the crew had seen a genuine meteor shower or a series of ordinary, random micrometeoroid impacts. In either case, she said, there were "audible screams of delight" at the science operations centre.

Artemis II return plans and Orion toilet issue

Wiseman and his crew, the first lunar explorers since Apollo 17 in 1972, are targeting a Friday splashdown off the coast of San Diego to complete their nearly 10-day test flight. The recovery vessel USS John P. Murtha departed port on Tuesday for the planned recovery area.

The flight prepares the way for Artemis III next year, a demonstration of lunar-lander docking in orbit around Earth. Artemis IV is due to follow in 2028, when two astronauts will attempt a landing near the moon's south pole.

Mission Control told the astronauts that Orion's troublesome toilet would not need maintenance on Tuesday. Since last week's launch, the toilet has repeatedly been unavailable to the crew, requiring them to use a back-up bag-and-funnel arrangement for urination.

After Monday night's lunar flyby, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told the crew: "We definitely have to fix some of the plumbing" ahead of the next Artemis mission. Engineers believe a blocked filter in the system that flushes waste overboard may be responsible.

Apart from the toilet problem and other comparatively minor issues, the mission has proceeded well, Isaacman said at a Tuesday news conference, "but I'll breathe easier when we get through reentry and everybody's under chutes and in the water."