Artemis II mission controller recalls 'the moon looked wrong' during historic lunar flyby

NASA's Artemis II lead communications officer Chris White describes the tense moments during the crew's lunar flyby and the stunning photos that resulted.

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On April 6, the four astronauts of NASA's Artemis II mission flew their Orion spacecraft around the far side of the moon, cutting off all communication with Earth for about 40 minutes. In Houston's Mission Control Center, Chris White, the lead integrated communications officer (INCO), anxiously awaited their reappearance. "It was all nerves," White told Live Science.

White's team had uploaded a checklist of roughly 300 commands to Orion earlier that day, pre-programming the exterior cameras to capture specific shots during the flyby. When telemetry data finally appeared on his monitor after the blackout, voice contact was restored shortly after. However, it took another day for the photos to be transmitted back to Earth.

Opening the images the following morning, White was astonished. "I opened a photo — the eclipse photo — and I couldn't breathe," he recalled. "I was like, 'There's no way that this turned out this well on the first try.'" The images have since been viewed by tens of millions of people worldwide.

White described the moon's appearance from Orion's unique vantage point as disorienting. "We're so used to the way that the moon looks from our perspective here on the Earth, that when the vehicle was coming at it from an angle, you could see more of the backside of the moon," he explained. The unfamiliar shape and texture made it seem "wrong," he said, causing his brain to struggle to reconcile what he was seeing.

During the flyby, White adjusted the camera exposure, which revealed unexpected hues. "It was a little too dark, and then we bumped it up a little bit," he said. "And all of a sudden, these muted grays became a little bit more brown." He admitted he hadn't anticipated capturing that level of color from Orion's cameras.

The INCO console managed all of Orion's communication systems, including video, audio, radio, and a laser-based optical system. White noted that during liftoff, he "looked up from my console screen zero times to look at the live video," and didn't see the footage until the next day. The team remained busy for at least the first three flight days, and White said none of them "truly relaxed until the vehicle was safely in the water."