« Houston, Integrity, comm check, » she said. « It is so great to hear from Earth again. »
With no signal possible on the lunar far side, the capsule had been running entirely on its own. Computers aboard Orion fired the engines at precisely the right moment to swing the spacecraft onto a homeward trajectory — a manoeuvre performed beyond the reach of any ground controller.
When the link came back, relief spread through Mission Control. Engineers watched data begin populating their screens; seconds later, Koch’s voice followed.
Uncertainty is a constant companion in crewed spaceflight — however routine a mission appears, nothing is certain until the crew is heard from again. Relatives who had gathered to watch spent the communications blackout working through briefing documents, deliberately keeping their attention away from the clock.
A queue of stored information is now making its way to Earth, reports the BBC. Everything Orion recorded on the far side — sensor readings, flight data, imagery — is being downloaded through NASA’s Deep Space Network, with mission teams set to spend the coming days analysing the results.
Among the images already coming through are what appear to be the sharpest photographs ever taken of the Moon’s far hemisphere.
The crew wasted no time marking the occasion. Immediately, there was work to return to.
Before the silence fell, Glover offered what turned out to be a fitting farewell — invoking the teachings of Jesus, including the instruction to love your neighbour as yourself, before signing off with words that carried a double meaning.
‘We will see you on the other side,’ he said.
The blackout caps a mission that has already rewritten the history books. At 1.57pm ET, Orion carried its crew to 252,757 miles from Earth — a distance no human being had previously reached.
The record that fell belonged to Apollo 13, whose crew was pushed to 248,655 miles from home during their desperate emergency return in 1970 — a record that had stood for 55 years.
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