Artemis II breaks radio silence in four historic words | US | News
“Houston, Integrity, communication control,” he said. “It’s nice to hear from Earth again.”
Since no signals were possible on the far side of the Moon, the capsule moved entirely on its own. Computers aboard Orion activated the engines at exactly the right moment to launch the spacecraft into a homeward orbit; This was a maneuver beyond the reach of any ground controller.
Relief spread through Mission Control when connection was restored. The engineers watched as data began to fill their screens; Koch’s voice followed seconds later.
Uncertainty is a constant companion in crewed spaceflight; No matter how routine a mission seems, nothing is certain until the crew is heard from again. Relatives gathered to watch spent the communications blackout working on briefing documents and deliberately keeping their attention away from the clock.
According to the BBC, a tail of stored information is now on its way to Earth. Everything Orion records on the far side—sensor readings, flight data, images—is being downloaded via NASA’s Deep Space Network, and mission teams will spend the coming days analyzing the results.
The images already arriving include what appear to be the sharpest photographs ever taken of the far hemisphere of the Moon.
The crew wasted no time in marking the occasion. There was work to get back to immediately.
Before silence fell, Glover delivered a fitting farewell speech, invoking the teachings of Jesus, including the instruction to love your neighbor as yourself, before signing off on words that carried a double meaning.
‘See you on the other side,’ he said.
The power outage brings to an end a mission that has already rewritten the history books. At 1:57 p.m., Orion carried its crew 252,757 miles from Earth, a distance no human has ever reached before.
The record falling belonged to Apollo 13, whose crew was pushed 248,655 miles from home during a desperate emergency return in 1970; This record stood for 55 years.
