The windows on the Orion spacecraft are already dirty. The four astronauts aboard Artemis II spend so much time pressing their faces against the glass to stare back at their home planet that mission commander Reid Wiseman actually radioed Houston to ask for window-cleaning procedures.

As the Artemis II crewed moon mission soars deeper into space than humans have traveled in decades, back on Earth, the White House has proposed slashing NASA’s budget.

The findings were published March 20 in the journal AGU Advances and were based on data recorded by Juno in 2021 and 2022, after NASA granted an extension to the spacecraft’s operations upon completing a five-year science campaign at Jupiter.

Earth is struck by reentering human-made objects far more often than most people realize. According to debris specialists, some mass survives to the ground about once a week, a reminder that the end of a spacecraft’s mission is often as engineered as its launch.

The four NASA Artemis II astronauts will swing around the far side of the moon, venturing deeper into space than any humans in history.