By launching last Wednesday,they ensured themselves of a total solar eclipse from their vantage point behind the moon,courtesy of the cosmos.

Topping their science target list: Orientale Basin,a sprawling impact basin with three concentric rings,the outermost of which stretches nearly 600 miles across.

Other sightseeing goals: the Apollo 12 and 14 landing sites from 1969 and 1971,respectively,as well as fringes of the south polar region,the preferred locale for future touchdowns. Farther afield,Mercury,Venus,Mars and Saturn — not to mention Earth — will be visible.

Artemis II is Nasa’s first astronaut moonshot since Apollo 17 in 1972. It sets the stage for next year’s Artemis III,which will see another Orion crew practice docking with lunar landers in orbit around Earth. The culminating moon landing by two astronauts near the moon’s south pole will follow on Artemis IV in 2028.

While Artemis II may be taking Apollo 13’s path,it’s most reminiscent of Apollo 8 and humanity’s first lunar visitors who orbited the moon on Christmas Eve 1968 and read from the Book of Genesis.

Glover said flying to the moon during Christianity’s Holy Week brought home for him ‘the beauty of creation.’ Earth is an oasis amid ‘a whole bunch of nothing,this thing we call the universe’ where humanity exists as one,he observed over the weekend.