NASA Artemis II astronauts witness meteorite strikes on the Moon during flight<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nNASA Artemis II astronauts have witnessed a stunning sight marked by meteorites hitting the Moon’s rugged surface during its historic lunar flight. <\/p>\n
Mission commander Reed Wiseman and crew member Jeremy Hansen reported seeing “pricks of light” on the moon’s surface, providing rare real-time data for scientists on Earth. <\/p>\n
Artemis II documented a total of six meteorite impacts during a seven-hour observation window. <\/p>\n
“I don’t know if I expected to see anything from the crew on this mission, so you probably saw the surprise and shock on my face,” said Kelsey Young, the mission’s lunar science chief. <\/p>\n
According to Young, it’s a major milestone to see these rare effects. <\/p>\n
The Houston team’s “audible screams of delight” underscore the importance of human observers being able to identify these events.<\/p>\n
“This phenomenon is something we don’t see very often,” said Jenny Gibbons, the mission’s backup astronaut. AFP.<\/i><\/p>\n
“Those were really high-priority sciences for us, so the fact that they looked at four or five was excellent.”<\/p>\n
Canadian crew member Hansen called these attacks “pricks of light”. “I would suspect there were a lot of them.”<\/p>\n
“I would say they were milliseconds, like the fastest a camera shutter can open and close,” Wiseman said. He said the flashes were “white to bluish white”.<\/p>\n
Scientists are currently working on linking visual reports from astronauts with data from satellites orbiting the moon. This helps verify the accuracy of remote sensing equipment and improves our understanding of the “daily flow” of space debris.<\/p>\n
According to Bruce Bates, chief scientist at the Planetary Society, analysis of the brightness and duration of the brightness will help scientists understand the frequency of the impact.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n