RICHMOND, Va. — The Artemis II crew is making their way back to Earth from a 10-day mission to the moon, preparing for a Friday evening splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
University of Richmond physics professor Jack Singal said there are few times when looking up into the sky has been more captivating to the public.
"There is so much that’s exciting here. Humans have not gone past low Earth orbit since the end of the Apollo program," Singal said. "This mission is actually the farthest from Earth that we’ve ever been. The previous record was in Apollo 13 where they swung around the far side of the moon from us and came back around and this time because of the circumstances they went further than that. So it’s really exciting to be back to going out into space."
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Despite Artemis II traveling farther from Earth than any human has gone before, the mission shares connections with past lunar explorations that bring the achievements closer to Central Virginia.
"In the Apollo program, one of the greatest scientific things that they did was to deploy a reflecting cube on the surface of the moon and there is a laser that can shoot from Earth and hits this cube. The time that it takes that laser to go out and back, that’s a very precise way to measure the distance to the moon," Singal said. "The person who designed that experiment was a University of Richmond graduate back in the day."
Across the city, Virginia Commonwealth University also shares a connection to the current mission.
The Artemis II crew named a newly discovered crater after Commander Reid Wiseman's late wife, Carroll Wiseman, who was a VCU nursing school alum. VCU confirmed the connection on social media.
Watch: Artemis II crew names lunar crater after VCU School of Nursing graduate Carroll Taylor Wiseman
"I think it’s good for people to know that there is probably some connection in their area. The space program is not just Mission Control in Texas or the headquarters in Washington D.C. or aerospace company around the beltway," Singal said. "It really is spread around the country in terms of the people and institutions that contribute to these things."
Virginia helps lead the way in a new era of space exploration
Virginia's role in the Artemis II mission extends beyond Richmond, to the aerodynamics and data analysis driving the spacecraft.
David Piatak of the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton is part of the team supporting the aerodynamics behind Artemis II.
Following last week's launch, which sent four astronauts around the moon for the first crewed mission of its kind in more than 50 years, Piatak and his team have been tracking data from pre-launch testing to real-time analysis.
"It was a successful flight, 99.97% accurate orbital insertion up and up in orbit for Artemis two. And so we've downloaded that flight data. We're looking at it carefully, and we're assessing where we got it a little wrong and where we did really well," Piatak said.
Piatak said the work involves a global team effort, ranging from wind tunnel testing in Hampton to service module testing in Europe.
"...but ultimately ensuring that it's safe and operational for the next flights to the moon," Piatak said.
The team is already looking ahead to future missions, including a planned moon landing with Artemis IV.
"We're going to learn more in the coming days, I think, after we get crew back safely tomorrow night at 8:07pm Eastern. After that, I think we're going to find out more about what the mission architecture and the timing looks like for Artemis three, and what Artemis four, the landing would look like," Piatak said.
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