Still incredible to think that humans are finally, after decades, returning to the moon. Right now, the Artemis II mission is underway. The ship Integrity is about halfway through its journey as of today. As someone who has been obsessed with space for as long as I can remember, I still can't believe this is happening in my lifetime.
Obviously, I've been tuning into NASA's livestream of the trip whenever I can. Another reason I'll always argue back when my family tries to say that technology is bad -- it is today's level of technology that allows us to watch along with the crew as they visit our moon. That's such an amazing thing. Like, we get to be right there with them, seeing the day-to-day of being an astronaut. Sorry parents, but that is absolutely worth having to deal with twitter's existence.
Today, around 2pm by NASA's clocks, the ship passed the distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970. That means those four astronauts have now been farther from the Earth than any other humans. Apparently the ISS was on the opposite side of Earth at the time and they were scrambling towards the opposite wall to set the record for greatest distance between two humans lol. I love that even in history-making moments like this, humans are still being so very human.
I don't think I can put into words why this whole event makes me so emotional. I think part of it is just that I love space and can't believe we're back in it now after so long. That there is the very real possibility of people stepping foot on the moon (or maybe even Mars?) in my lifetime. But I think it's also the fact that we've felt so divided as a species in every possible way this past year. And now here we are, all coming together to witness humanity doing something amazing. The comments in the livestream were written in countless languages from all over the world. This wasn't a win just for those four astronauts, or for NASA and CSA, but for our species as a whole. For the planet Earth. That's beautiful.
They've been releasing photos from the trip each day, but I'm going to wait until the ship is back and they have all the photos posted before showing off some of my favorites. I will say, though, that there is one gorgeous shot of the planet Earth with the sun lighting it up from behind that made me break down crying the first time I saw it. Our pale blue dot, our beautiful marble in space. The planet that we all get to live on together and shouldn't for a second take for granted.
Background Image by Valentin Salja