The Artemis Moon mission: why art is its companion

As the astronauts of the ARTEMIS 2 lunar mission were en route to our neighbouring celestial body, the Moon, the anchorman of the Austrian television broadcast’s main evening news programme conducted an in-depth interview with Carmen Possning, an astronaut candidate and space physician from Austria. When asked what stood out to her in her communications with the astronauts, she replied, somewhat surprisingly, that the ARTEMIS crew members had expressed themselves emotionally and artistically. The surprise was probably so great because astronauts usually have professional backgrounds such as air fighter pilots, engineers, or natural scientists, and are not necessarily said to have an affinity for the arts in the first place.

Astronauts of many earlier missions have often expressed their experience of seeing Earth from space in deeply poetic, even philosophical language. This phenomenon is sometimes described as “the overview effect”, a term coined by the space philosopher Frank White, also chosen as the title of his seminal book published in 1987. It refers to a cognitive shift in awareness reported by many astronauts when viewing Earth from orbit or beyond to explain a very human condition attached to the space travel experience. In fact, quite a few astronauts from the Apollo missions, as well as part-time residents of the International Space Station, have expressed their insights and feelings, triggered by the ‘overview effect’, through art. A few of the best known are:

• the visual artist Allan Bean. He walked on the Moon during the Apollo 12 mission. After leaving NASA, he became a full-time painter, creating impressionistic renderings of the Moon. He explicitly stated photography could not capture the emotional reality, so he painted what it felt like to walk on the moon.

• the poetic writer Al Worden. He was the pilot commanding the Apollo 15 module in 1971. After his return, he wrote a book of poetry titled Hello Earth: Greetings from Endeavour. His poems reflect subjects like the Isolation in deep space, or the tiny, distant Earth, expressing a sense of existential detachment and wonder. He is probably the best example of a major astronaut explicitly writing poetry about the experience of a moon mission.

• the musical interpreter Chris Hadfield. While aboard the International Space Station ISS for 178 days, he recorded a version of “Space Oddity”. A quote on his perception of Planet Earth: “It’s like looking at a living painting… constantly changing.” He wrote original songs and reflective texts. His work combines poetic language with music, often describing Earth as fragile and alive. Though not “poetry” in the strict literary sense, his lyrics and spoken reflections are strongly poetic.

• the philosophical voice Ron Garan. Quote: “I saw an iridescent biosphere teeming with life… I didn’t see the economy, but I saw humanity” - published in his book “The Orbital Perspective” in which he uses a highly evocative, almost lyrical language, though in essay form rather than poetry.

Across decades — from the Soviet Union’s Vostok 1 mission to the US Apollo program and today’s Artemis program — astronauts consistently report a sense of Earth’s fragility, a feeling of unity of humanity, a shift from national to planetary perspective, and a mixture of awe, humility, and responsibility.

Beyond space missions out of Earth, the cosmos, in its observable and ‘audible’ form, has always inspired even the most formalistic astrophysicists to make poetic statements. One of the founders of astrophysics of the 17th century, Johannes Kepler, viewed the universe as a harmonious whole based on musical proportions. He elaborated on this in particular in his 1619 work ‘Harmonice Mundi’. In it, he closely linked astronomy with music theory, not to avoid being accused of heresy, but to prove the God-given order of the universe. Quote: “I confirm and demonstrate that the movements of the planets are modulated according to harmonic proportions.”

On the surface, the primary concern of modern astrophysicists is to make phenomena of the cosmos perceptible to human senses. A fascinating intersection: cosmic phenomena that are inherently non-human such as light, radiation, and vibration, becoming aesthetic experiences — images and even “music” through scientific mediation. Two main pathways exist: aesthetic visualization and acoustic sonification.

Addressing the aesthetic interpretation, scientists often speak of “cosmic landscapes”. Artists on their part compare images collected from space due to their vastness and sublimity to romantic painting, as well as to abstract expressionism by their color fields and structure. This links directly to the philosophical category of the sublime — nature exceeding human scale and comprehension.

The “sound” of space, i.e., sonification: Of course, and strictly speaking, space is silent. However, many cosmic processes involve vibrations, oscillations, and frequencies that can be converted into sound. Stars, for example, vibrate internally, thus producing oscillation modes. This can be measured as changes in brightness or surface motion, and frequencies can be converted into audible tones. In other words: Each star has a kind of “acoustic fingerprint”. Some scientists, therefore, literally speak of “listening to stars”.

The famous Voyager 1 & Voyager 2 spacecrafts, launched in 1977, detected plasma waves and radio emissions from planets like Jupiter and Saturn, whose signals were converted into audio, resulting in sounds like whistles, chirps, and wind-like textures. Consequently, such sound was often used by composers in electronic music and sound art.

As said in the introduction to this section, scientific sonification in art style is used to draw on the human senses to arrive at creative and analytical insights. For example, NASA systematically converts X-ray or infrared radio data into sound, whereby images become musical sequences indicating by pitch a position, by brightness the volume, etc. These approaches are not arbitrary; they preserve data structure and yet produce aesthetic, often haunting compositions. In consequence, cosmic timescales and frequencies are compressed into human perception. Beauty is not added — it emerges from physical structure. E.g., turbulence visualizes complexity, oscillation shows harmony, etc.

Where Johannes Kepler imagined planetary motion as music, we today literally reconstruct such “music” from data. The ancient idea of the “music of the spheres” thus becomes realizable — though via translation rather than direct hearing.

The mission of GRASPnetwork is to use art and artistic expression to make the invisible and the (as yet) incomprehensible visible and understandable. At this point, we must quote Shakespeare’s Hamlet and his famous observation: “There are more things in heaven and earth ... than are dreamt of in your philosophy”. The question this raises is how to bridge the gap between what we already know for certain and what we do not yet know. Undoubtedly, the first choice is to bridge this gap using scientific methodology and to achieve knowledge-driven progress. However, as the methodology for gaining this knowledge is not yet at our disposal, we, as thinking and feeling human beings, make use of a whole spectrum of our own, naturally given methods, such as imagination, emotion, faith, creativity and – consistent with our Western philosophy of science, shaped by Aristoteles – that which should actually be placed first: logical and mathematical thinking.

For a period, the author of this article had the pleasure of cooperating with Vienna based Anton Zeilinger, the 2022 Nobel Prize-winning, highly respected physicist, who stated he is a "religious person" who believes in God, though not necessarily through the strict rituals of organized religion. He considers science and faith as complementary rather than opposing, remarking that his research into quantum physics has reinforced his belief. A statement which we GRASPers would have no problem subscribing to.

Afterword

Shortly after publication of this article, my colleague Nader Imani provided the following reflection upon its contents and message:

The renewed journey to the Moon through the Artemis mission in April 2026 reminds us that space exploration has always been an accomplishment in our abilities to deliver. It reflects a shared human search for meaning and connection, allowing us to see our world from the outside, in its beauty. When we look into space, we also look back at our home planet, and at ourselves, in the rich diversity that humanity represents.

Centuries ago, Ulugh Beg devoted his life to observing the stars with care and humility. Strong of these observations, Johannes Kepler described the universe as a harmonious whole, shaped by order and proportion. Though separated by time and culture, both viewed the cosmos not as something to conquer, but as something to understand. Their work reminds us that science has always crossed borders.

From the first human spaceflight on Vostok 1 to Apollo 17, Space missions, endeavor and challenger, the International Space Station, and today’s Artemis program, astronauts describe a strikingly similar experience: seeing Earth as fragile, unique, and a home shared by all of us, living beings. From this perspective, national boundaries fade, replaced by a sense of planetary unity. The words, music, and reflections of astronauts show that this experience is deeply human and often expressed through philosophy and art, beyond technology alone.

Today, when we transform cosmic data into images and sound, we continue this tradition. What Ulugh Beg and Kepler once imagined can now be reconstructed from measurements. Space becomes something we can see, hear, and feel, step by step, with each mission.

In this way, the vastness of space reflects the endless beauty of humanity itself, not in separation, but in unity. Each mission, including Artemis, reminds us that exploring the universe also means rediscovering how closely we belong together on our small, shared planet. History has known divisions, as sometimes experienced by humanity, but over centuries the sense of unity has endured. The future of humanity will be one with prosperity shared by all.