DURING their historic lunar flyby, astronauts on NASA’s Artemis II mission witnessed meteorites striking the rugged surface of the Moon, a sight that has piqued scientists’ curiosity.
“That was definitely impact flashes on the moon. And Jeremy (Hansen) just saw another one,” mission commander Reid Wiseman reported on Monday while flying around the Moon — the first such journey by humans in more than half a century. “Amazed”, replied Kelsey Young, the mission’s lunar science lead, as she followed the spacecraft from more than 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometres) away on Earth.
“I don’t know if I expected to have the crew see any on this mission, so you probably saw the surprise and shock on my face,” she said, recounting the strikes at a press briefing the next day. Among NASA’s team in Houston, there were “audible screams of delight” from scientists when the crew described flashes of light caused by meteorite impact, Young said.
The phenomenon is “something that we have not witnessed often,” the mission’s backup astronaut Jenni Gibbons told AFP. “They were really high priority science for us, so the fact that they saw four or five was just outstanding.”
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