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[Music]

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So the most exciting thing to me about
Artemis II is just the return to the moon.

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We haven't been there in 50 years.

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Human eyes are going to see parts

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of the moon that haven't been seen
by anyone before.

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It also recommits us to exploring
the solar system

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in a way that we haven't
in a long time.

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And I think it provides an opportunity
for younger generations to understand

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the excitement of doing that
kind of exploration.

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[Music full]

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The moon is this great sort of
chiaroscuro subject,

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because the most recognizable
thing about it

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is the changing sun angles
and how that brings out

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the shape of craters near the terminator,
which is the day-night line.

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Because there aren't,

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you know, oceans and clouds
and all the things that you see on Earth,

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the moon is really all about its shape,
and the shape is telling you something

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about its long history and the history
of the entire solar system.

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All the things that have happened to

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the Earth have been erased
by geologic processes

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and weather and climate,
and that doesn't happen on the moon.

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The moon has recorded everything
that's happened since its formation

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almost 4.5 billion years ago.

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That tells us a lot about where we came
from, where the solar system came from.

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It also reveals something about
the composition of the Earth

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that we can't see because
it's buried beneath the crust.

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Some of that is on the surface of the moon
because it's been excavated

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by all the impacts.

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Artemis is our return to the moon
after 50 years.

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The emphasis of Artemis is going to be,
first of all, science.

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But second of all, learning
to sustain a presence on another world,

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first on the moon, but we're
hoping that that's a steppingstone

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to Mars and other destinations in
the solar system eventually.

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Artemis II will be a flyby mission.

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It's not going to land.

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We're testing all of the technology
that we've created

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for flying to the moon since Apollo.

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A lot of systems have been modernized,
and we need to make sure

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that all of those work.

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The astronauts will be looking out
the window at parts of the moon

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that have never been seen
by human eyes before.

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They will be flying by the moon

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at an altitude that's much higher
than Apollo's orbits,

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and so they will see the entire disk of
the moon, including areas that are closer

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to both the north and south pole,
that astronauts from Apollo never saw.

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All of that depends on the lighting,
which we really won't know

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until launch day, but we can practice
with different lighting scenarios.

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It's hard for people to sort of
picture that in their mind.

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If you can make a visualization of it and
show them a movie, that helps everybody

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choose the targets and also practice
aiming at those targets.

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The astronauts have actually been looking
at these visualizations through

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the lens of the camera and practicing
aiming at the various targets.

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[Music]

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This is a map of the surface of
the moon, obviously,

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but it shows what

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the Apollo astronauts could see
in sunlight while they were in orbit.

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The brighter parts are the parts
that they could see.

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The darker parts,
like this entire area here

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and places that are farther
north and south are places

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that they couldn't see in sunlight, either
because it was nighttime there

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or because it was beyond
the horizon of the astronauts.

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All of the Apollo flights orbited

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the moon at a distance of about 110km.

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Because the astronauts
were flying at such a low altitude,

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their horizon was actually quite close
and they couldn't see the north

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and south poles, and this whole area
over here was not in sunlight at the time.

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And it includes this amazing impact
feature here called Orientale.

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Orientale is a very large impact feature.

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It's about 650km wide.

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It's got multiple rings.

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These are rings that form like ripples
in a pond from the impact,

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but of course it's on a huge scale.

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The middle of Orientale
has that sort of dark basalt

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lava covering it like the dark spots
that we see on the near side.

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It's one of the biggest ones
that's more on the far side than the near.

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So seeing it with human eyes and sort of
picking out features that maybe

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you don't even see in robotic cameras
is an important goal for the mission.

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[Music]

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One of the photographic targets

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that is on everybody's list is

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pictures of the Earth
beyond the limb of the moon.

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During Apollo 8, on their fourth orbit,
they finally turned their

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spacecraft around so that they could see
in the direction of the Earth.

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[Anders] Oh, my God,
look at that picture over there!

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There’s the Earth coming up.

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Wow, is that pretty!

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[Borman] Hey, don't take that,
it’s not scheduled.

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[camera takes picture]

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[Anders] You got a color film, Jim?

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I think it surprised all of them
how beautiful and how human it was to see

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the entire planet Earth from behind
the horizon of another celestial body.

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That photograph, called “Earthrise,”
had a huge impact on the public,

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because from space you
don't see country boundaries,

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you don't see some of the human problems
that we deal with on the surface,

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and you also recognize that
the Earth is a finite place.

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It's not infinite, it's not everything.

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It is a pale blue dot
in the vastness of space.

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Artemis is going to have
that opportunity once again.

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I anticipate that the astronauts
will have the same feeling

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that the Apollo 8 astronauts did,
and I think it will have a similar effect

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on a new generation of people
who are watching this mission unfold.

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[Music]