{"id":46487,"date":"2026-04-05T21:04:28","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T21:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=46487"},"modified":"2026-04-05T21:04:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T21:04:28","slug":"artemis-astronauts-spot-moons-grand-canyon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=46487","title":{"rendered":"Artemis astronauts spot Moon’s ‘Grand Canyon’"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Artemis astronauts have taken in sights of the Moon never before seen by human eyes, crew members reported on Sunday as their spacecraft crossed the two-thirds mark on their journey to a long-anticipated lunar flyby.<\/p>\n

As the astronauts went to bed in the early hours of Sunday, closing out the fourth day of their 10-day mission, they were nearly 200,000 miles (321,869 kilometres) from Earth and 82,000 miles from the Moon, according to Nasa’s online dashboard.<\/p>\n

The US space agency published on Sunday an image taken by the Artemis crew, showing a distant Moon with the Orientale basin visible.<\/p>\n

“This mission marks the first time the entire basi<\/p>\n

“This mission marks the first time the entire basin has been seen with human eyes,” Nasa said. The massive crater, which resembles a bullseye, had been photographed before by orbiting cameras.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Canadian children live from space, astronaut Christina Koch said the crew was most excited to see the basin – sometimes known as the Moon’s “Grand Canyon”.<\/p>\n

“It’s very distinctive and no human eyes previously had seen this crater until today, really, when we were privileged enough to see it,” Koch said during the question-and-answer session hosted by the Canadian Space Agency.<\/p>\n

The next major milestone is expected overnight on Sunday into Monday, at which point the astronauts will enter the “lunar sphere of influence,” where the Moon’s gravity will have a stronger pull on the spacecraft than Earth’s.<\/p>\n

If all proceeds smoothly, as the Orion spacecraft whips around the Moon, the astronauts – Americans Koch, Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover, along with Canadian Jeremy Hansen – could set a record by venturing farther from Earth than any human before.<\/p>\n

Flyby plans reviewed<\/p>\n

Nasa said the Artemis crew has completed a manual piloting demonstration and reviewed their lunar flyby plan, including reviewing the surface features they must analyse and photograph during their time circling the Moon.<\/p>\n

Earlier, the astronauts kicked off their day with a meal that included scrambled eggs and coffee, Nasa said, and had woken up to the tune of Chappell Roan’s pop smash “Pink Pony Club”.<\/p>\n

“Morale is high on board,” commander Reid Wiseman told Houston’s Mission Control Centre as the space crew’s work day began.<\/p>\n

The father of two girls was in high spirits in part because he had the chance to speak with his daughters from space.<\/p>\n

“We’re up here, we’re so far away, and for a moment, I was reunited with my little family,” he told a live press conference. “It was just the greatest moment of my entire life.”<\/p>\n

It’s a feat Wiseman has dubbed “Herculean” and which humanity has not accomplished in more than half a century.<\/p>\n

The astronauts have had geology training in order to be able to photograph and describe lunar features, including ancient lava flows and impact craters.<\/p>\n

They’ll see the Moon from a unique vantage point compared with the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 70s.<\/p>\n

Apollo flights flew some 70 miles above the lunar surface, but the Artemis 2 crew will be just over 4,000 miles at their closest approach, which will allow them to see the complete, circular surface of the Moon, including regions near both poles.<\/p>\n

Never before seen<\/p>\n

The Artemis 2 astronauts have already seen brand-new perspectives.<\/p>\n

“Last night, we did have our first view of the moon’s far side, and it was just absolutely spectacular,” Koch, the mission specialist, said during a live interview from space.<\/p>\n

John Honeycutt, manager of Nasa’s Space Launch System programme, shared at a briefing on Saturday a new image transmitted by the astronauts.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Artemis astronauts have taken in sights of the Moon never before seen by human eyes, crew members reported on Sunday as their spacecraft crossed the two-thirds mark on their journey to a long-anticipated lunar flyby. As the astronauts went to bed in the early hours of Sunday, closing out the fourth day of their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}