Artemis

[Dakota Tebaldi]

After returning from its distant retrograde orbit, Artemis has finished its second close pass around the Moon and is now on the way home!

Orion exited the lunar sphere of gravitational influence Tuesday, Dec. 6, at 1:29 a.m. CST for the last time on the Artemis I mission less than a day after completing the return powered flyby burn that put the spacecraft on course for splashdown Sunday, Dec. 11. Earth’s force of gravity is now the primary gravitational force acting on the spacecraft.

 

[Free]

 

[Free]

NASA’s Orion spacecraft is about to face its final test—and it’s a big one

Reentry is our priority-one objective for a reason."

arstechnica.com

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

I wasn't able to watch it happen live, but just a couple of hours ago it happened! Artemis successfully separated from the European Service Module, de-orbited, and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at 9:40am PST, it is currently in the process of being recovered.

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Moment of splashdown:


And some photos!

Orion Splashdown by NASA Johnson, on Flickr

Orion Splashdown by NASA Johnson, on Flickr

Artemis I Orion Recovery Operations by NASA Johnson, on Flickr

Artemis I Orion Recovery Operations by NASA Johnson, on Flickr

More at the Flickr page, just click any one of those to get there.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Some spicy post-mission vijeos for you!

The first is a shot we did not get to see in the official coverage stream - Mission Control in Houston! The live coverage focused on the launch itself and the range control center at Kennedy. This is a few minutes from inside MCC Houston on launch day - I posted a couple of photos of the layout early in the thread but there hasn't been any real working video of it until this. Since Artemis 1 was an uncrewed mission, a few of the controller stations were not crewed as well, obviously the ones focused on crew health and safety. Notice how different the Artemis-era control room is from the Apollo-era room layout, and even the more recent Shuttle-era room layouts, even though it is physically one of the same rooms! Just remodeled extensively of course. Gone are the tiered risers and the iconic large consoles, replaced with newer, smaller, but more versatile and powerful equipment that still manages not to look too different from like your living room computer desk!

Go/NoGo launch poll is at 1:45, if you were curious ^^ Launch itself begins around 3:50.


The second one is a highlight reel and is about half an hour long, showing a few angles of launch, some important moments during the mission itself including some great onboard camera footage, and finally of course the re-entry and recovery from a few days ago.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

NASA published the Artemis 2 launch dates. Date range is from Feb to Apr 2026.

Artemis II consists of four people, 3 Americans and 1 Canadian. It will have the first black male and woman in history orbiting the moon.

Artemis II will not land on the moon. Their mission is just to orbit it and then return back to earth, so the crew will be in the capsule all the time. The overall duration is about 10 days in space.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

So basically they could do this in Earth orbit or with an empty capsule and it would be equally useful.

 

[Casey Pelous]

So basically they could do this in Earth orbit or with an empty capsule and it would be equally useful.

No. That would not provide the mission critical distraction from the Trump/Epstein files.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

So basically they could do this in Earth orbit or with an empty capsule and it would be equally useful.

No, they did Artemis I with an empty capsule. They need people in it this time and they need them to go out that far because the crew support systems and manual flight controls need to be proven out and you can't do that with automation or with a couple of low-stress days in Earth orbit.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Artemis 2 is rolling out to the launch pad today. It'll take the better part of the afternoon to get there.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

I'm pretty sure they can test everything they *actually* need to test in Earth Orbit, this is just marketing.

 

[Casey Pelous]

You can go much farther down that road ...

I'm pretty sure they can test everything they *actually* need to test in Earth Orbit, achieve much more for much less just by ditching this idiot mission and using robots and rovers. This is just marketing.

Let's face it -- meat is a terribly inefficient, expensive, and high-risk thing to send into space. Even when everything goes right, at outrageous expense, humans aren't worth a crap at surviving for very long out there.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Trump Declared a Space Race With China. The US Is Losing

If you want to put people back on the moon, don’t gut the agency in charge of getting them there.

www.wired.com

Evernote Link because paywall

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

I'm pretty sure they can test everything they *actually* need to test in Earth Orbit, this is just marketing.

Minus the travel to Moon orbit.

 

[Free]

Minus the travel to Moon orbit.

Artemis I already accomplished that.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Artemis I already accomplished that.

But not with humans who have to breathe oxygen and rely on life support.

 

[Free]

But not with humans who have to breathe oxygen and rely on life support.

They do? That's new information... Maybe the Apollo missions can speak to that.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

They do? That's new information... Maybe the Apollo missions can speak to that.

Yeah, Apollo managed to do it. But this mission is not using Apollo's technology, but newer one, which is yet untested. Simple as that.

If the car industry would follow your argument we would have stopped doing crash tests decades ago. We didn't for good reason.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

But not with humans who have to breathe oxygen and rely on life support.

I don't think there's any difference in the behavior of the life support system in low Earth orbit and in Lunar flyby.