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The crew of the Artemis II mission captured an unprecedented image of the Orientale basin this Sunday, a geological formation located at the extreme western edge of the lunar disc that has never before been fully seen by human eyes.
The NASA shared the photograph on its official account on X with the message: "History in the making. In this new image of our Artemis II crew, you can see the Orientale basin on the right edge of the lunar disk. This mission marks the first time the entire basin has been seen with human eyes."
The Orientale basin is one of the most impressive and well-preserved impact formations on the Moon, with an exterior ring, the Cordillera Mountains, measuring approximately 930 kilometers in diameter, and it was formed about 3.8 billion years ago at the end of the period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment.
Image credit: NASA
Its location at the transition between the visible and the hidden side of the Moon means that it can only be observed from Earth during specific phases of libration and never in its entirety, making this image a true scientific milestone.
Until Artemis II, only robotic probes had photographed this region: Lunar Orbiter 4 was the first to record it as a multi-ringed structure in 1967, followed by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in later missions.
The photo was taken from inside the Orion capsule, named "Integrity" by the crew, with most of the lights turned off to prevent reflections on the windows.
The limited lava flooding of the basin, which preserves its target-like structure, makes it a natural laboratory for studying impact geology, the cortical asymmetry between both sides of the Moon, and the processes that shaped the primitive solar system.
The mission was launched last Tuesday from Launch Complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, with a crew of four astronauts: Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Jeremy Hansen.
The four are the first human beings to leave Earth's orbit since the crew of Apollo 17 in December 1972, over 53 years ago.
Glover is the first person of African descent to travel to the vicinity of the Moon, Koch is the first woman on a crewed lunar mission, and Hansen is the first Canadian citizen to participate in such a mission.
This image adds to a series of visual milestones from the mission: last Thursday, NASA released high-resolution photographs of Earth with a visible green aurora, accompanied by the message "Good morning, world."
The lunar flyby is scheduled for this Monday, at an altitude of between 6,430 and 9,650 kilometers from the far side of the Moon, and the trajectory could take the astronauts approximately 7,600 kilometers beyond the dark side, potentially breaking the record for distance from Earth established by the Apollo program.
Artemis II does not include a lunar landing; its goal is to validate the systems of the Orion spacecraft with a human crew before Artemis III, which is scheduled for the first lunar landing at the south pole in 2027, as part of the new space race between the United States and China.
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