On April 6, the four crewmembers of NASA's Artemis II mission swooped around the far side of the moon in their Orion spacecraft, disappearing from Earth's sight and losing all contact with humanity for roughly 40 minutes.
At the same time, some 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) away, Chris White, the mission's lead communications officer, was nervously pacing the halls of NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston, waiting for the chance to do his job again.
"It was all nerves," White, the lead integrated communications officer (INCO) on Artemis II, told Live Science. In addition to maintaining communication with the Orion spacecraft (an impossible task while the moon blocked every signal), the INCO team also controlled its exterior cameras — a job White had previously done for the International Space Station (ISS).
The team knew for over a year what Orion's lunar flyby would entail, and which shots the cameras should capture. They had sent a checklist of nearly 300 commands to Orion that morning, t...
English (US)