American science can't afford to lose its verve—just think of the Artemis II mission

Three words uttered from Mission Control to Reid Wiseman, commander of Artemis II, perfectly capture the groundswell of emotion many of us have experienced over the past week as a team of astronauts flew beyond the previous reaches of human space travel: “Amaze. Amaze. Amaze.”That line, borrowed from the hero of the science-fiction blockbuster Project Hail Mary, came as Wiseman took in, for the first time, the full majestic scale of the moon.

Our nearest neighbour and nightly companion loomed large before them, looking several times bigger than home, which was a mere crescent off in the distance.Less than an hour earlier, at roughly 1:56pm Eastern US time, Wiseman and his three fellow crew members had broken the previous record for human space travel. They didn’t touch down on the moon—this is a dress rehearsal for future landings. Yet, just boomeranging around it is a monumental feat.Remarkably, we mere mortals get to watch it all unfold in real time.

We can tune into the Nasa feed and hear the astronauts’ first impressions of a meteor hitting the surface of the moon, see the photos they share on Instagram—from space!—and take in their near-giddy descriptions of a solar eclipse from the far side of the moon.“No matter how long we look at this, our brains are not processing this image in front of us,” Wiseman said of their view. “It is absolutely spectacular, surreal, there’s no adjectives. We’re going to need to invent some new ones.”That was one of several moments over the last few days when I’ve been overcome by the mission’s profundity.