The NASA Artemis II splashdown successfully brought the crew home after a historic space mission that included a rare solar eclipse seen beyond the moon.
During the mission, the astronauts witnessed one of the world’s rare celestial events, a solar eclipse, which occurred when the moon completely obscured the sun for about 53 minutes.
Shortly after the event occurred, NASA published a time-lapse of the event, which showed the Sun’s corona shining around the moon’s disk.
NASA Artemis II has captured a solar eclipse
The moon blocked the sun during the eclipse, leaving only a bright solar corona that looked like a glowing halo. NASA’s time-lapse video, which compressed nearly an hour of the total into a short clip, showed the unique astronomical event.
Scientists are currently investigating whether the glow contains both zodiac light and corona, or just one of these elements.
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The long duration of the solar eclipse observed during Artemis II sets it apart from previous eclipse events recorded on Earth. Totality on Earth exists at most a few minutes after its occurrence.
The spacecraft maintained its trajectory in deep space, giving scientists a longer period to study the celestial bodies. The scientists achieved better visibility of faint coronal elements along with background stars.
Images of the NASA Artemis II solar eclipse became sharper as observers viewed the event from locations outside Earth. As the brightness of the sunlight decreased, stars and planets became visible to observers. Astronauts saw earthshine, which occurs when sunlight from Earth creates a faint glow on the moon.
The Orion solar panel’s wing cameras captured the images that captured the solar eclipse as the spacecraft traveled through the moon’s shadow. The phase caused a communications blackout with Earth that lasted until contact with Earth could be restored.
Commander Reid Wiseman, along with pilot Victor Glover and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, observed the Artemis II solar eclipse. The crew experienced extended totality as they traveled through space, which differed from the astronauts of the Apollo program who only experienced shorter eclipses.
