By Alexander Ciarfalia
You’ve probably heard of the movie Project Hail Mary, Ryan Gosling plays an astronaut on a dangerous mission in deep space. But did you know that this plot was actually made a reality by a rocket called the Artemis II. The Artemis II was a rocket that launched on the first of last month and traveled over 600,000 miles in the span of ten days, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Kristina Koch and an astronaut from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) Jeremy Hansen. This mission made history as it was the first manned mission to take photos over the far side of our moon. Previous missions to the moon used the rocket’s thrust as a sole means of propulsion, but the Artemis was different.
The Artemis was launched to spin around the earth, and use its gravity as a kind of slingshot. Imagine holding a rope that’s attached to a spinning wheel, and when the wheel spins really fast, you let go and go flying. The Artemis did the same thing with its launch, but instead of a rope it used the earth’s gravity which threw it on a perfect course to the moon. After reaching the moon, the shuttle did the same thing it did on earth, but this time as the astronauts were passing the far-side of the moon they took pictures of undiscovered moon craters that have never been documented before.
This gave the crew aboard the Artemis a unique opportunity to name a crater after themselves. However instead of doing this, they named this crater after Reid Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll Wiseman. This was not pitched by Wiseman, but rather the rest of the crew in an emotional radio call to NASA on earth.
