1 Moon, 2 ways: What Artemis-2 saw from far side and Chandrayaan-3 at South Pole

On April 7, 2026, the Artemis 2 crew flew around the Moon's far side, broke a 56-year distance record, and witnessed a total solar eclipse from space. Here is how their mission compares to India's Chandrayaan-3, which landed near the lunar south pole in 2023 and made history of its own.

In Short

• Artemis 2 crew became first humans to see Moon's far side
• Chandrayaan-3 made India the first to land at south pole
• Both missions are chasing water ice at the lunar south pole

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, four humans flew around the Moon for the first time in 53 years.

They broke a distance record that had stood since 1970.

They watched Earth disappear behind the Moon and come back again.

They saw a solar eclipse from space, the Sun vanishing behind a black orb while its corona glowed around the edges, and one of them said their brain refused to process what their eyes were seeing.

And for seven hours, they photographed and described a part of the Moon that no human had ever seen with their own eyes before: the far side.

Meanwhile, about 3,75,000 kilometres away, a small robotic rover called Pragyan sat quietly in the dark near the Moon's South Pole, asleep since September 2023, waiting for a sunrise that never came.

Two missions. The same Moon. Very different parts of it.

WHAT DID THE ARTEMIS 2 CREW SEE DURING THE LUNAR FLYBY?

The Artemis 2 crew, aboard the Orion spacecraft, named Integrity, spent seven hours making scientific observations of the Moon at closest approach, coming within about 6,500 kilometres of the surface.

They photographed craters, noted colour variations that could reveal mineral composition, and documented features on both the near side and the far side.

At 11:27 p.m. IST, the crew surpassed the human distance record set by Apollo 13 in April 1970, reaching a maximum distance of 4,06,773 kilometres from Earth. Apollo 13's record of 4,00,171 kilometres had stood for 56 years.

Toward the end of the flyby, Orion, the Moon, and the Sun aligned in a way that gave the crew a front-row view of a total solar eclipse from space.

The Sun disappeared behind the Moon for nearly an hour.

The crew could see the solar corona, the Sun's outermost atmosphere, glowing around the lunar edge.

They spotted Venus, Mars, and Saturn in the darkness behind the Moon.

They also witnessed four meteoroid impact flashes on the lunar surface, brief bursts of light as space rocks struck the Moon, which will help scientists assess surface hazards for future missions.

Commander Reid Wiseman told Mission Control it was indescribable. Pilot Victor Glover said their brains were not processing what their eyes were seeing.

WHAT IS LUNAR FAR SIDE AND WHY CAN'T WE SEE IT FROM EARTH?

The Moon's far side is the hemisphere that permanently faces away from Earth. This happens because of tidal locking: the Moon takes exactly as long to rotate on its own axis as it does to orbit the Earth, so the same face is always turned towards us.

The far side was completely unknown until 1959, when a Soviet spacecraft photographed it for the first time. It looks strikingly different from the near side: more heavily cratered, with fewer of the dark volcanic plains called maria that we see when we look up at the full Moon. No human had ever seen it with their own eyes, in real time, until April 7, 2026.

The Artemis 2 crew also experienced a planned communications blackout of about 40 minutes as Orion passed behind the Moon, its bulk blocking all radio signals between the spacecraft and Earth.

WHAT DID INDIA'S CHANDRAYAAN-3 DO AND WHERE DID IT GO?

Chandrayaan-3 went somewhere completely different. On August 23, 2023, Isro's Vikram lander touched down at 69 degrees south latitude, near the lunar South Pole, making India the first country in history to reach this region. No American, Russian, or Chinese mission had ever landed there.

The South Pole is scientifically unlike anywhere else on the Moon. Its deep craters have not seen sunlight for billions of years. Inside them, temperatures can fall to minus 230 degrees Celsius. In that permanent darkness, water ice has been confirmed, ice that has remained frozen and undisturbed since the early Solar System.

Pragyan, the six-wheeled rover that rolled out of Vikram, spent 14 Earth days on the surface. It used a laser-based instrument called LIBS, which stands for Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy, to fire laser pulses at lunar soil and analyse the light emitted by the resulting plasma.

Through this method, it became the first mission to directly confirm the presence of sulphur near the South Pole. It also detected aluminium, calcium, iron, chromium, titanium, manganese, silicon, and oxygen. These were the first in-situ elemental measurements at the South Pole in the history of lunar science.

WHY DOES EVERYONE WANT THE SOUTH POLE?

The South Pole's water ice is the reason both India and Nasa are drawn there. Water can be split into hydrogen and oxygen, which are the basic components of rocket fuel. A supply of water on the Moon means astronauts could drink it, grow food with it, and manufacture the fuel needed to travel further into the Solar System. One geologist famously called the lunar South Pole the most valuable piece of real estate in the Solar System.

Nasa's first crewed lunar landing is now planned for Artemis 4, targeting early 2028, at the South Pole. That mission will build on what Chandrayaan-3 proved: that the South Pole can be reached, and that it holds something worth going back for.

Artemis 2 flew around the Moon to prepare for that landing. It photographed the far side, studied the corona during a solar eclipse, and broke a record set before most of its crew were born.

India got there first, robotically, on a fraction of the budget. Nasa is coming with people, and with the ambition of staying.

The Moon has two very different stories to tell. Both have barely begun.

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