- The Artemis II astronauts made more history with a call to the International Space Station on Tuesday.
- Astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir, the first all-female pair to spacewalk in 2019, shared a heartfelt reunion 230,000 miles apart.
- The Artemis II crew aims for a Friday splashdown near San Diego after completing a lunar flyby on Monday.
HOUSTON — Still aglow from their triumphant lunar flyby, the Artemis II astronauts put in a call to their friends aboard the International Space Station on Tuesday as they headed home from the moon.
It was the first moonship-to-spaceship radio linkup ever. NASA's Apollo crews had no off-the-planet company back in the 1960s and 1970s, the last time humanity set sail for deep space.
"We have been waiting for this like you can't imagine," Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman called out.
For Christina Koch on Artemis II and Jessica Meir aboard the space station, it marked a joyous space reunion despite being 230,000 miles apart. The two teamed up for the world's first all-female spacewalk in 2019 outside the orbiting lab.
Koch told her "astro-sister" that she'd hoped to meet up with her again in space, "but I never thought it would be like this — it's amazing."
"I'm so happy that we are back in space together," Meir replied, "even if we are a few miles apart."
Houston's Mission Control arranged the cosmic chitchat between the four lunar travelers and the space station's three NASA and one French resident.
As Tuesday dawned, Wiseman continued to beam back pictures of the previous day's lunar rendezvous, which set a new distance record for humanity. The highlight: an Earthset photo reminiscent of Apollo 8's Earthrise shot from 1968.
Koch described being awestruck by not just the beauty of Earth, "but how much blackness there was around it."
"It just made it even more special. It truly emphasized how alike we are, how the same thing keeps every single person on planet Earth alive," she told the space station crew. "The specialness and preciousness of that really is emphasized" when viewing the home planet from the moon.
In a later debriefing with Mission Control's lead lunar scientist, Kelsey Young, the astronauts recounted how they spotted a cascade of pinpricks of light on the lunar surface caused by impacting cosmic debris. The flashes lasted mere milliseconds and coincided by chance with Monday evening's total solar eclipse.
The first lunar explorers since Apollo 17 in 1972, Wiseman and his crew are aiming for a Friday splashdown off the San Diego coast on Friday to wrap up the nearly 10-day test flight.
It sets the stage for next year's Artemis III, a lunar lander docking demo in orbit around Earth. Artemis IV will follow in 2028 with two astronauts attempting to land near the lunar south pole.
As for the Orion capsule's pesky potty, Mission Control assured the astronauts that no repairs were required Tuesday. The toilet has been on-and-off limits for the crew since last week's launch, prompting them to rely on a backup bag-and-funnel system for urination.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told the crew following the lunar flyby Monday night: "We definitely have to fix some of the plumbing" ahead of the next Artemis mission.
