During their flyby of the far side of the moon, the Artemis II astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft saw as many as six flashes emerging from the lunar surface. Surprisingly, they were witnessing small meteorites impacting the ground and producing brief flashes of light.
NASA’s control room recorded the team’s surprise during the mission livestream, although the cameras did not pick up the flashes. According to the astronauts, the flashes were white or blue-white and lasted less than a second. The cameras they were using to document the moon weren’t fast enough to record them.
Lunar surface replete with craters generated by meteorite collisions.
Photograph: NASA
The crew was flying between 6,000