The astronauts even captured dramatic photographs of the moon’s crater-filled south polar area, the place NASA is in touchdown astronauts on future Artemis missions.
The moon’s south pole is pockmarked with craters which might be considered full of water ice. But the realm is considerably tougher to navigate than these close to the moon’s equator, the place the Apollo astronauts touched down. NASA has mentioned observations in the course of the Artemis II mission could possibly be used to pinpoint attainable touchdown websites for missions to return.
Toward the top of their lunar flyby, the astronauts grew to become the first to witness a photo voltaic eclipse from house. They made detailed observations over the course of about an hour, because the solar slipped behind the moon and re-emerged once more on the opposite facet.
During the early levels of the eclipse, the astronauts needed to don particular glasses (very like those worn by folks on Earth to view photo voltaic eclipses) to guard their eyes till the solar’s gentle was absolutely blocked by the moon.
