NASA’s Artemis II astronauts on a historic trip to the Moon will study the Moon’s surface with what lead scientist Kelsey Young calls “the best camera that ever has or will exist” – with their own eyes. Early Sunday, the four-member crew, consisting of three Americans, Commander Reed Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, passed the “two-thirds” mark of their journey aboard the Orion spacecraft. They are expected to reach the moon on Monday and conduct a fly-around, photographing the far side of the moon during the mission. “The human eye is basically the best camera that has ever existed or will ever exist,” Kelsey Young, Artemis II’s lead scientist, told AFP. “The number of receptors in the human eye far exceeds the capacity of a camera.”Despite advances in imaging technology, Young said human vision is excellent at detecting subtle changes in color, context and lighting that reveal textures on the lunar surface. “Humans can understand how light changes surface details, such as how angled lighting reveals texture but reduces visible color,” he said.The crew underwent more than two years of rigorous training to become “field scientists”, including geological expeditions to Iceland and Canada, simulating a flight to the Moon, and memorizing the “Big 15” sites of the Moon. Using an inflatable Moon globe, the astronauts practiced observing how sunlight changes the colors and textures of the surface, and refined their skills at taking detailed notes.Noah Petro, head of NASA’s Planetary Geology Laboratory, said the moon would appear to astronauts to be “about the size of a basketball held at arm’s length.” “The question I’m most interested in is whether they will be able to see colors on the moon’s surface,” he said, referring to the light gray and brown colors that indicate composition and history.David Kring of the Lunar and Planetary Institute played down expectations of major discoveries, but emphasized the historic nature of the observations. He said, “Astronauts describing what they’re seeing…it’s a phenomenon that at least two generations of people on Earth have never heard of before.”Artemis II was launched on April 1 from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39B atop a NASA Space Launch System rocket. This mission, the first manned Moon visit in more than 53 years, advances NASA’s Artemis program, which aims for sustainable lunar exploration and the last manned mission to Mars.