Poetic Objectivity of a Lunar Flyby: The Enlivened Poetics of Mission Artemis II
May 18, 2026
By Sammetria Goodson, Cohort '25
On April 1, 2026, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched the first crewed mission of its Artemis program from Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral. Named after the Greek goddess of the moon and twin sister to Apollo, the Artemis II Mission objectives were to confirm deep space travel capabilities and to capture human-generated images of the far side of the moon. Both objectives are vital to returning humanity to the moon. I watched most of the prelaunch and all of the launch stream via YouTube early April 2, after confirming that everything was a “go” and that Crew Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen were safely in space flight — a necessary precaution for an 80’s kid who watched Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrate and breakup on live TV. After joining the now post-streamed launch countdown, I witnessed the colossal rockets fire up, the launchpad umbilicals detach, and the tiny Orion capsule perched at the apex of the launch tower lift off into a virtually cloudless blue sky. Not realizing that I was holding my breath, I exhaled with a jolt of pride as Johnson Space Center, Houston, took over command. At that moment, I, the little girl from Space City, reconnected with the enchantment of crewed rocket launches and the beauty of things going as planned.
By fortuitous timing, the 10-day Mission overlapped with the week of Professor Howard Caygill’s Hegemonic Fantasms Seminar during which we considered the ideas presented in Enlivenment: Towards a Poetics for the Anthropocene by Andreas Weber. In Enlivenment, Weber reoriented the Anthropocene, the geological age of human-centered planetary change, away from the dualism of human-over-nature dominance towards a commons of human-with-nature co-creation (3). Central to Weber’s proposal is the concept of ‘enlivenment,’ or the perspective gained through viewing the commons of human/nature-in-co-creation as transformative metabolic and poetic exchange (1). Enlivenment is the sensation of experiencing and witnessing freedom of being as profound consonance. Witnessing is not the detached third-person viewpoint of, for example, scientific objectivity. Instead, witnessing is an enlivened first-person seen and present-person experienced account of togetherness enriched by poetic objectivity (139, 140, 141). Poetic objectivity is interdimensional and intersubjective; it is a lens or “poetic gesture” that “shows us something profound about aliveness” (139). As the Crew continued to meet their testing requirements and prepare for their lunar flyby, it became clear that various aspects of the Mission were intersecting with and animating the Enlivenment concepts proposed by Weber.
First, I noticed that NASA emphasized the communal aspects of the Mission. Along with standard astronautics and space biology information, NASA provided a steady stream of content that went beyond public relations-informed Crew interviews. Whether in the form of a curated wake-up song playlist,1 the launch of two global design competitions, one to design the zero-gravity indicator affectionately called “Rise”2 and the other to cultivate the culinary art and science of space food,3 or the Crew’s ‘day in the life of an astronaut’ Instagram posts, NASA’s unambiguous intent was a collective lunar space trip. NASA’s approach to Artemis II revealed a third mission objective: to engender wonder amongst people on Earth, children and adults alike, by transforming humanity into a commons of space explorers. To underscore this third objective, which I call Mission Enlivenment, NASA issued ‘boarding passes’ to the 5,647,889 people who submitted their names to ride along with the Crew on an SD card tucked into Rise’s pocket.4 Every time Rise floated into view, the boarding pass holders saw themselves floating along with the Crew on a journey flyby to the moon — a profound consonance of enlivened togetherness.
Second, like many others, I noticed the poetic way in which the Crew described what they were experiencing during the Mission. Consider an Instagram slide posted by Mission Specialist Christina Hammock Koch describing first-person images of a crescent Earth and spherical Earth illuminated by the moon (Figs. 1 and 2).
The copy, organized in two quatrains, embraces metered consonance, alliteration, simile, and metaphor. Although scansion is beyond the scope of this reflection, the prosodic nature of Mission Specialist Koch’s verse appears in her rhythmic descriptions of Earth seen from afar. In the first stanza, Koch invites us to ponder the (in)significance of Earth personified as an upturned smile positioned as a Crescent Earth, an awe-inspiring reversal of perspective in contrast to viewing the Crescent Moon from Earth (Figs. 1 and 2). In the second stanza, through the language of music and dance, Koch invites us into the resonance of aliveness via the shared experience of aurora light and sunlight (Figs. 1 and 2). Koch, having obtained training in both lunar science from selenologists, scientists who study the moon, and lunar photography from professional photographers,5 chose the lens of poetic objectivity to behold Earth from space. By doing so, Koch beckons viewers into a relationship with the interdimensional and intersubjective synchronous experience of enlivened Earth existence.
While the successful launch was beautiful to behold, I experienced another moment of beauty as I watched live news coverage of the Crew capsule reentering the Earth’s atmosphere. Despite the extreme danger of reentry, I sat transfixed as the heat-shield protected capsule-turned-fireball fell from the sky and safely splashed down off the coast of San Diego, California. The sensation I felt viewing reentry was one of relief mixed with astonishment that a global project, requiring the highest levels of sustained differentiated 6 brilliance and co-creation,7 executed under life-and-death circumstances, went as planned. This type of beauty, which I call the ‘aesthetics of competence,’ restores confidence that humanity can solve problems at tremendous scale, even when disastrous failures like the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia reentry disintegration have occurred in the past. Once I heard that the Crew, now bobbing in the Pacific Ocean, was “green,” or code for alive and uninjured, I allowed wonderment to wash over me once again and for enlivenment to take root in my heart.
Endnotes
1. “Artemis II Wake-up Songs.” Spotify, created by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 22 April 2026, <open.spotify.com/playlist/0WO94bzZeuUun777vv6UJu>.
2. Harter, Clara. “This California 8-year-old Designed a ‘Zero gravity indicator’ Used in Artemis II Moon Mission.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times Media Group, 2 April 2026, <latimes.com/california/story/2026-04-02/artemis-ii-california-8-year-old-rise-zero-gravity-indicator>. Second grader Lucas Ye submitted the winning design for “Rise,” which was inspired by the Apollo 8 “Earthrise” image.
3. Bullard, Savannah, and Loura Hall. “NASA Back for Seconds with New Food System Design Challenge.” NASA, NASA, 13 January 2026, <nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/nasa-back-for-seconds-with-new-food-system-design-challenge/>. Part of the “Mars to Table” competition includes a challenge to address food insecurity on Earth.
4. “Artemis II: Send Your Name Around the Moon.” NASA, NASA, <nasa.gov/send-your-name-with-artemis/>. Accessed 23 April 2026.
5. “Artemis II Crew Lunar Flyby Photography Training.” NASA Image and Video Library, uploaded by Johnson Space Center, 27 January 2026, <images.nasa.gov/details/jsc2026m000006-Artemis_II_Lunar_Flyby_Photography_Training>.
6. Hidden Figures:’Give or Take’ Clip. Directed by Theodore Melfi, 20th Century Fox, 2016. YouTube, 4 January 2017,<youtube.com/watch?v=JAEnv1PvBvw>. The clip ‘Give of Take’ from the “Hidden Figures” movie exemplifies the beauty of what happens when diverse and differentiated brilliance is given space to thrive. In the clip, a group is discussing the final calculations for the splash down location of John Glenn (Glen Powell). After inconclusive information is given by one attendee, Johnson, the only African American and only woman in the room, is asked to provide more exacting calculations on the spot. Upon taking to the chalk board, Johnson calculates the exact splash down site within, ‘give or take’ 20 square miles. Everyone in the room is astonished at Johnson’s work, a demonstration of aesthetics of competence.
7. “Artemis Partners.” NASA, NASA, <nasa.gov/artemis-partners/>. Accessed 24 April 2026. A list of global partners includes the Canadian, European, and Japanese Space Agencies.
Works Cited
Hammock Koch, Christina [@astro_christina]. Photo of Crescent Earth and Earth Illuminated by the Moon. “The bright side hung in the blackness…” Instagram, 5 April 2026, instagram.com/p/DWwU9GHkXzG/?igsh=OXA5Z25yZjNvY2k0.
Weber, Andreas. Enlivenment: Towards a Poetics for the Anthropocene. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The MIT Press. 2019. Print.