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As far as phone calls between friends go, everything about this one was out of this world.
Thousands of miles apart, 'astro sisters' Christina Koch and Jessica Meir caught up on Wednesday during the first moonship-to-spaceship radio call.
The achievement marked another record for Nasa's Artemis II mission.
But for Ms Koch, returning from the Moon on Orion spacecraft Integrity and Ms Meir, on board the International Space Station (ISS), it was also a chance to shoot the cosmic breeze together.
The friends previously worked together on the station, a laboratory orbiting Earth, and took part in the first all-female space walk in 2019.
Ms Koch, 47, referred to Ms Meir, 48, as her 'astro sister', adding that she had hoped to meet in space again – but 'never thought it would be like this, it's amazing'.
'I'm so happy that we are back in space together,' Ms Meir replied, 'even if we are a few miles apart.'
In fact, the ISS and Integrity were a staggering 230,000 miles apart during the call, made as the Artemis II astronauts hurtled back to Earth after a historic pass around the far side of the Moon. The last time humans ventured into deep space, during Nasa's Apollo voyages in the 1960s and 1970s, they communicated only with colleagues on Earth.
Pictured: Astronaut Christina Koch
Pictured: Jessica Meir
This picture, titled 'Earthset', was taken from the far side of the moon and shows the Earth dipping beyond the lunar horizon
During the call, Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman said: 'We have been waiting for this like you can't imagine.'
Houston's Mission Control arranged the call between the four lunar travellers and four of the ISS's residents – three of whom are from Nasa and one from France. Ms Koch told them she was awe-struck – not just by the beauty of Earth, 'but how much blackness there was around it'.
She told the Space Station crew: 'It just made it even more special. It truly emphasised how alike we are, how the same thing keeps every single person on planet Earth alive.
'The specialness and preciousness of that really is emphasised when viewing the home planet from the Moon.'
Integrity's crew are the first lunar explorers since Apollo 17 in 1972. They are aiming for a splashdown off San Diego in the early hours of Saturday UK time to wrap up the nearly ten-day test flight. Nasa has warned there is 'no plan B' if the Artemis II heat shield fails during re-entry.
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