At 2:45 PM EDT, Orion's main cabin windows faced the Moon and the six-hour photography programme began.1 The crew rehearsed the full choreography on Day 5 , reviewing NASA's target list of surface features. At a flyby altitude of 4,070 miles (over 6,000 km), still roughly 58 times higher than Apollo's closest passes, the spacecraft provides a wide-field geological survey that low-orbit missions could only capture in narrow strips.
Confirmed targets include the Orientale basin, which the crew first observed with unaided eyes on Day 4 , and the lunar South Pole region. CBS News reported that the crew will observe Orientale from multiple angles throughout the flyby.2 Orientale is the best-preserved large impact basin in the solar system and serves as the reference standard for comparing craters on every rocky body from Mercury to Pluto. Multi-angle human observation may resolve structural questions that orbital cameras, locked to a single pass geometry, cannot.
Jared Isaacman noted the crew's focus is "gathering observations before Artemis III launches in approximately one year."3 The choreography assigns each crew member specific windows, targets, and camera settings across the full six hours.
