Scientists are awaiting data collected from NASA’s Artemis II mission. The deep space journey by four astronauts aboard the spacecraft wrapped up Friday.
University of Arizona astrophysicist Erika Hamden notes the science conducted on the mission happened alongside the symbolism of humans making a trip around the moon.
“It’s a nice contrast with the other space exploration that we’ve seen recently that are more commercial and individual oriented, but this was these astronauts going for all of us,” she said.
Hamden notes having humans examine the lunar surface makes a difference.
“They would look at things that they thought were interesting that were not necessarily in the NASA lunar targeting package ahead of time. I think this shows it was worth giving the astronauts time to focus on what they think is valuable.”
The moon has been mapped by satellites for decades, but Hamden says some lunar features viewed by the Artemis astronauts sparked a certain curiosity that robots just don’t possess.