NEW DELHI, Apr 3: The NASA-launched Artemis II astronauts have captured blue planet’s brilliant beauty as they zoom ever closer to the moon.
NASA released the crew’s first downlinked images on Friday, 1 1/2 days into the first astronaut moonshot in more than half a century.
The first photo taken by commander Reid Wiseman shows a curved slice of Earth in one of the capsule’s windows. The second shows the entire globe with the oceans topped by swirling white tendrils of clouds.
As of midmorning Friday Mr Wiseman and his crew were 145,000 kilometres from Earth and were quickly gaining on the moon with another 270,000 kilometres to go. They should reach their destination on Monday.
The three Americans and one Canadian will swing around the moon in their Orion capsule, hang a U-turn and then head straight back home without stopping. They fired Orion’s main engine Thursday night that set them on their course. They’re the first lunar travellers since Apollo 17 in 1972.
As Artemis II is racing towards the moon, India’s own “fabulous four” astronaut-designates “Gaganyatris” are undertaking a rehearsal of a different kind – a high-altitude analogue mission in the cold desert of Ladakh, the stark ‘moonscape’ where oxygen is scarce and conditions are harsh.
This is Mission MITRA (Mapping of Interoperable Traits & Reliability Assessment), a field simulation jointly developed by ISRO’s Human Space Flight Centre (HSFC) and Protoplanet – with the latter as the lead executing partner – and supported by specialists spanning engineering, medicine and psychology. The premise is simple: before India takes its next big leap in human spaceflight, it must understand the most complex system of all – the human being inside the mission.
And that is why, even as the world watches Integrity sail outward, India is paying attention to a different but equally decisive variable: cohesion, the ability to stay aligned when the environment punishes the body and tests the mind. Currently in Ladakh, India’s astronaut-designate, Group Captain Prasant Balakrishnan Nair, has framed the moment with a philosophical clarity that echoes the very human purpose of exploration.
“As Artemis II lifted off and disappeared into the black expanse, there was a peaceful joy in knowing that very soon we will once again have the point of view of Earth from the Moon that re-emphasises Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. Sitting in Ladakh and experiencing its pristine peace, one realises why we in this ancient land were always rooted in this eternal philosophy of ‘the world is one family’,” he said.
(Manas Dasgupta)
