Astronauts onboard Artemis II set to be the first humans to see the moon’s most mysterious feature in sunlight

The science is mind-blowing, the implications for space travel are quite incomprehensible.

But when four Artemis II astronauts venture to the dark side of the Moon tomorrow, it will also be a mind-blowing personal journey, as they will be the first humans to peer directly into the depths of its most mysterious feature.

Looking like a giant bullseye, the Mare Orientale (or Eastern Sea) will appear before them as a 200-mile-wide crater created by an asteroid that crashed into the surface at nine miles per second 3.7 billion years ago.

This will surely be a life-changing moment for Commander Reid Wiseman, 50, mission specialists Christina Koch, 47, Jeremy Hansen, 50, and pilot Victor Glover, 49.

All contact with mission control will be blocked by the Moon, leaving the crew alone to marvel at the sheer power of space.

The destructive impact of this asteroid is unimaginable; It’s three times the size of the one thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs here.

Surrounding the crater are mountain ranges and target rings formed by the debris cloud caused by the impact.

Apollo astronauts saw it half a century ago, but from a much lower altitude than Artemis I’s altitude of 4,000-6,000 miles and never in sunlight. This meant that the best images of Ronald Evans from Apollo 17 were dirty and black and white.

Mare Orientale will appear before astronauts as a 200-mile-wide crater created by an asteroid that crashed into the surface at nine miles per second 3.7 billion years ago.

Artemis II will have no such problem: they and the Sun will be directly overhead.

Although photographed by satellites, images from Earth are hampered by the phenomenon of “tidal locking,” which is why the Moon has a dark side.

‘Hardening’, the wobbling of the axis, rarely reveals the Orientale as a shadowy spot.

Tidal locking ensures that the Moon takes as long to make a full circle as it does to complete the Earth’s monthly orbit – as NASA puts it: ‘Like a dancer spinning around but always facing its partner.’

This is the result of Earth’s gravitational pull over billions of years, causing the Moon to slow its rotation until it is exactly in sync with the length of its orbit.

Despite all the sights I’ll encounter with Artemis tomorrow – for good measure, a ‘Kreutz sungrazer’ comet will pass near the sun’s surface – the crew knows this mission is of great scientific importance.

They will closely examine a surface marked with craters created by asteroid bombardment.

According to one theory, such an asteroid hits the Earth and disperses the seeds of life.

Christina Koch describes the Moon as the ‘witness’ of everything that happens to the Earth.

He said: ‘Starting by studying the Moon, we can learn more about the formation of the solar system, how planets form… the possibility of life there.’