For 40 minutes, the greatest solitude humans have known

The crescent Earth — our oasis holding everything we cherish, now just a speck in the infinite blackness — seemed to kiss the jagged lunar surface. The moon’s thousands of scars projected themselves across the Earth as it slowly slipped out of sight.

“I’m actually getting chills right now just thinking about it,” said Artemis II Cmdr. Reid Wiseman, talking to The Times while still in space Wednesday evening (Earth time). “It was just an unbelievable sight, and then it was gone.”

The crew of four — in the dim green glow of their spacecraft, with no more elbow room than a Sprinter van — entered a profound solitude few have ever experienced. Farther from Earth than any humans in history, the crew could no longer reach Mission Control, their families or any other living member of our home planet.

For 40 minutes Monday, it was just them, their high-tech lifeboat and the moon.

Artemis II Cmdr. Reid Wiseman peers out the window of the Orion spacecraft as his first lunar observation period on Monday begins.

(NASA)

The crew members paused their rigorous scientific observations for just three or four minutes to let the surreal feeling settle. They shared some maple cookies brought by Canadian Space Agency and Artemis II mission specialist astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

We humans eat seven fishes on Christmas Eve, samosas on Eid al-Fitr and maple cookies behind the moon.

But the astronauts still had work to do. NASA wanted to observe the far side of the moon, eternally locked facing away from Earth, with a highly sophisticated instrument the agency has seldom had the opportunity to measure this landscape with: the human eye.

The moon, appearing about the size of a bowling ball at arm’s length to the crew, hung in the nothingness. In complete silence, it beckoned.

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Artemis II pilot Victor Glover heard the call of the terminator: the border between the moon’s daytime and nighttime — the lunar dawn. Here, the sun cast stark, dramatic shadows across the moon’s steep cliffs, rugged ripples and seemingly bottomless craters.

Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch described the scattering of tiny craters across the daytime side proudly reflecting sunlight, like pinpricks in a lampshade. Hansen was drawn to the beautiful shades of blues, greens and browns that the surface reveals if you’re patient enough.

Even though Earth was hidden behind the moon a quarter million miles away, the crew couldn’t help but think of our home.

For Koch, the desolation was only a reminder of how much Earth provides us: water, air, warmth, food. Glover could feel the love emanating from our pale blue dot, defying distance. Hansen thought of the Earth’s gravity, still working to pull the crew home.

And yet, the crew was in the moon’s gravitational arena, where its gravity dominates Earth’s. It was the lunar monolith in front of them that gently redirected their small vessel of life around the natural satellite and toward home.

Eventually, home peaked back out from behind the dark orb.

The moon fully eclipsing the sun, as seen by the Artemis II crew. From the crew’s perspective, the moon appears large enough to completely block the sun, creating nearly 54 minutes of totality.

(NASA)

As a final show, or perhaps a goodbye, the moon temporarily blocked out the sun: a lunar eclipse.

“We saw great simulations made by our lunar science team, but when that actually happened, it just blew us all away,” Glover said. “It was one of the greatest gifts.”