It’s difficult to overstate the significance of NASA’s upcoming Artemis 2 mission. For the first time in over 50 years, astronauts will fly by the Moon on the first crewed test of the rocket and spacecraft that will eventually enable humanity’s long-awaited return to the lunar surface.
But Artemis 2 won’t just test spaceflight systems and hardware. This mission will also put NASA’s in-space science operations to the test. During their 10-day trip around the Moon, the crew will act as researchers, observing regions of the Moon’s far side never before seen with the naked eye.
“I’m really excited about this test flight,” Jacob Richardson, deputy lunar science lead for Artemis 2, told Gizmodo. “There is a super special place in my heart for Artemis 2—for the crew that has completely leaned into being a part of our science team and for the science that we’ll get out of this mission.”
Seeing the far side in a new light
The last time astronauts journeyed to the Moon was during NASA’s Apollo program, which sent nine missions to the Moon between 1968 and 1972. All but one entered lunar orbit, and six landed astronauts on the surface.
NASA launched each of these missions to reach the Moon when the landing sites were lit by early morning sunlight, a time when surface temperatures were manageable and shadows could help guide lander navigation.
The downside of this approach was that large portions of the surface—especially parts on the far side—were shrouded in darkness, or at least too poorly illuminated for the Apollo astronauts to observe with the naked eye from orbit. Their view was also limited by their low orbital altitude, which was typically just 70 miles (110 kilometers) above the surface.
The Artemis 2 astronauts—NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen—will not encounter the same limitations. Their spacecraft, Orion, will fly by the Moon at a minimum distance of 4,300 miles (6,900 km). And if the mission launches within the February window, which currently appears possible, nearly the entire lunar far side will be fully illuminated.
“They’re going to be the first humans to see virtually the entire far side disk in a single view,” Richardson said. From that vantage point, they’ll be able to observe and compare surface features thousands of miles apart from each other—a perspective orbiters can’t provide, he explained.
Mysterious features will reveal themselves
The crew will dedicate one day to observing the Moon’s surface. Richardson and his colleagues on the lunar science team have provided them with extensive training on how to look for certain features, photograph or videotape them, and write detailed descriptions of what they see.
The astronauts won’t have a precise idea of which far-side features they will be able to observe until launch, Richardson said. In the first few days of flight, he and his team will finalize a list of observation targets for the astronauts to prioritize.
These targets may include Mare Orientale, a massive impact basin that straddles the boundary between the Moon’s near and far sides, according to Richardson. Humans have never directly laid eyes on the far-side portion of this mare before. As the youngest and best-preserved multi-ring impact basin on the lunar surface, Orientale is a natural laboratory for investigating the Moon’s impact history and how ringed craters form.
The Artemis 2 astronauts could also get to observe one of the most mysterious features of the lunar surface: the South Pole-Aitken Basin. This far-side impact crater is the Moon’s largest, stretching more than 1,550 miles (2,500 km) across. Scientists believe it is also among the oldest, but its exact age remains elusive.
“We know that it’s this massive event that rocked the Moon. We know that similar events have happened across the entire solar system. So, any observations they make of that are going to really add to our understanding of this really interesting southern area of the Moon,” Richardson said.
But the crew’s primary objectives will be to observe color and albedo variation within the illuminated portions of the far side and look for impact flashes—bursts of light emitted when meteoroids strike the lunar surface—within the unilluminated portions, Richardson said.
This mission will offer an unprecedented view of the Moon’s most enigmatic terrain, giving scientists on Earth fresh insight into its history and the forces that continue to shape our closest celestial neighbor.
“My hope is that with the Artemis missions, we as scientists today—in 2026—end up looking kind of like fools, and that the Artemis missions create so much opportunity for discovery that we’re able to rewrite the textbooks,” Richardson said.
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