Artemis II crew documents faint lunar impact flashes during Moon flyby
Astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor “Ike” Glover and Jeremy Hansen recorded five tiny impact flashes on the Moon while orbiting 46,000 miles away, and the full dataset is now publicly available.
On the Artemis II flight, astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor “Ike” Glover and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen captured a dark Moon eclipsing the Sun and marked it with handwritten notes on a tablet. From a distance of 46,000 miles, they reported seeing five very faint pinprick flashes generated by meteoroid impacts on the lunar surface. These observations were logged between April 1 and April 10, 2026, as the Orion spacecraft traveled to the Moon and back, producing a wealth of visual and scientific data.
NASA has now made the entire lunar science dataset, including the annotated image and crew audio commentary, available to the global scientific community and the public for further analysis. The release aims to support ongoing lunar research and future mission planning.
Why it matters
The data provides rare, direct measurements of meteoroid impacts on the Moon, aiding scientific understanding and future exploration safety.
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