Artemis

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Behold These Breathtaking Views of Earth Captured by the Artemis 2 Astronauts

Photos of Earth taken by the Artemis 2 astronauts reveal their perspective as they zoom farther away from our home planet than any have gone before.

gizmodo.com

 

[Innula Zenovka]

NASA's Artemis II Live Mission Coverage (Official Broadcast)

This feed will provide continuous coverage of Artemis II mission activities with live commentary, beginning with tanking of the SLS (Space Launch System) roc...

www.youtube.com

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Each morning mission control plays a different song to the Artemis crew over the radio to signal the beginning of the "working day". This morning's song was Chappell Roan's "Pink Pony Club", lol.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

This is Angela Garcia, a planetary geologist and one of Artemis 2's science officers:


Here she is working the science console at Mission Control:

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

After this morning's song (Working Class Heroes by CeeLo), Houston played a special greeting and torch-passing message from Charlie Duke, who landed on the Moon on Apollo 16. Duke intimated that he left a photo of his family on the Moon and noted how much he liked that the Artemis spaceship is called Orion, as that was also the name of their lunar module during Apollo 16.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Just to clear up the name situation in case it gets confusing because it might be:

"Artemis" is the name of the program
"Artemis 2" is the name of this particular mission
"Orion" is the flight vehicle (crew capsule plus service module)
"Integrity" is the specific name of the crew capsule, chosen by the crew for this mission. "Integrity" is what Houston calls them whenever they communicate.

 

[Noodles]

Its extra confusing because I know of like 2 other projects named Artemis that are not space.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Here's the schedule for tomorrow's lunar flyby, according to NASA. All times are Eastern, so adjust as you need:

Monday, April 6

• 12:41 a.m.: Orion enters lunar sphere of influence at 41,072 miles from the Moon.
• 1:30 p.m.: The science officer in mission control will brief the crew on their science goals for the upcoming flyby.
• 1:56 p.m.: The Artemis II crew is expected surpass the record previously set by the Apollo 13 crew in 1970 for the farthest humans have ever traveled from Earth.
• 2:45 p.m.: Lunar observations begin.
• 6:44 p.m.: Mission control expects to temporarily lose communication with the crew as the Orion spacecraft passes behind the Moon.
• 6:45 p.m.: During “Earthset,” Earth will glide behind the Moon from Orion’s perspective.
• 7:02 p.m.: Orion reaches its closest approach to the Moon at 4,070 miles above the surface.
• 7:07 p.m.: Crew reach their maximum distance from Earth during the mission.
• 7:25 p.m.: “Earthrise” marks Earth coming back into view on the opposite edge of the Moon.
• 7:25 p.m.: NASA’s Mission Control Center should re -acquire communication with the astronauts.
• 8:35-9:32 p.m.: During a solar eclipse, the Sun will pass behind the Moon from the crew’s perspective.
• 9:20 p.m.: Lunar observations conclude.

Tuesday, April 7

• 1:25 p.m.: Orion exits the lunar sphere of influence at 41,072 miles from the Moon.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Astronaut Jim Lovell (Gemini 7 and 12, Apollo 8 and 13) died last August, but surprise - before he died, he recorded a message for the Artemis crew, and NASA played it for them this morning after their wake-up song.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Today as Orion approaches and flies around the Moon the crew is going to being doing several hours of observations of the lunar surface. It's all very scheduled and broken up into blocks of time.

During each block, two of the astronauts will be at the windows directly observing. One will be operating the camera and taking imagery of the surface, and the other will be doing annotations and making continuous verbal observations - all of these will be won't be directly heard on the livestream, they're being recorded for the benefit of the science team down on Earth. Halfway through the block, the two will swap roles.

The two astronauts not at the windows will be performing kinda support functions; communicating with Mission Control and passing on the annotations and other data that's been recorded, swapping SD cards and equipment for the observing astronauts, stuff like that. Those astronauts will also be able to take their meals when the time comes.

Then when the next block starts, the window astronauts and the support astronauts will switch places. Everyone gets to do each thing.

 

[Casey Pelous]

I confess, I have not been following the Artemis program in any sort of detail, mostly because I figured it was about 90% fantasy.

Today, I read a Quora answer about what they actually have planned -- which, according to the article, includes at least 15 launches just to fill up the in-orbit fueling system for the full-on "no kidding, we're landing on the moon this time" mission. That mission requires in-orbit refueling. "Mission," singular. Want another mission? Launch 15 more rocket-tankers, which, by the way, do not presently seem to exist in working form. Just one little detail to work out: No one knows for sure how to transfer cryogenic fuel in space, so there could be, you know, some problems that require more than 15 launches. Then, the actual mission description seems like a classic case of "you asked me the time, so I told you how to build an atomic clock." Other sources seem to confirm this description of the proposed procedure.

The article compared the Artemis program to the Chinese lunar landing program, which involves two launches. It's basically: a) Send up the lander, then b) send up the people to rendezvous with the lander and carry out the mission. To put it mildly, it is a significantly different "mission profile."

I can see that if we manage to make this Rube Goldberg contraption work, we'll learn a ton of stuff that will open doors to --- well, eventually, to doing to the Solar System what we are in the process of doing to Earth, oh yay. Considering that Emperor Nutjob just proposed cutting funds to NASA, that we are burning big stacks of money in a pointless war, and that said war's economic effects will almost certainly lead, at best, to a recession, I don't like the Artemis program's chances one bit. I've downgraded my evaluation from 90% fantasy to 98% fantasy.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

God, that sounds like more overhead than the original Shuttle program and that got basically canned. They had a whole railway system of orbiters, on-orbit modules, orbital transfer shuttles, and lunar surface shuttles.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

I confess, I have not been following the Artemis program in any sort of detail, mostly because I figured it was about 90% fantasy.

Today, I read a Quora answer about what they actually have planned -- which, according to the article, includes at least 15 launches just to fill up the in-orbit fueling system for the full-on "no kidding, we're landing on the moon this time" mission. That mission requires in-orbit refueling.

Yeah frankly at this point I'm considering that non-canon. It sounds stupid because it's stupid. That's Elon Musk's plan for his proposed lunar-lander variant of Starship, which SpaceX was originally contracted to make the first lunar lander for the original Artemis 3 mission. NASA recently reopened that contract since it's become impossible to ignore that any lunar-lander Starship, if it ever comes into existence *at all* (I personally am not holding my breath) will be many, many years too late for Artemis 3 or even 4. But nobody else has enough time to develop a lander in time for Artemis 3 either, which is why just a month or so ago NASA redesigned Artemis 3 to be an Earth-orbit mission and kicked the first lunar landing down the road to Artemis 4. Hopefully someone who is not Elon Musk will have a lander ready by then with a lot less of a Looney Tunes flight plan.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Being a little less optimistic maybe at this point, but I gotta say how I feel about this sort of thing in general:

The original lunar module that landed on the Moon could only hold two people, a very small amount of equipment, and barely enough fuel to take off again. It was really about exactly perfect for its job, and I really think there's a possibility that there just isn't a practical, viable way to land something bigger and heavier with more people on it. I think the next lunar lander that actually works is going to have to be not much bigger than the original LEM was.

A lot of people don't like to think that way. When it comes to futurism and space travel especially there's a lot of really wild assumptions that people take for granted and inviolate - like, "in the future the technology will be better, so of course we'll inevitably be able to launch bigger and bigger rockets and land bigger things with more people on the Moon and then Mars". When you suggest that the physics is too prohibitive right now and might remain that way even in the future, they tend to dismiss that with "the science WILL be better, we WILL learn how to do it, it's JUST a matter of time, period". Like, some people will get mad at you for even suggesting it might not turn out that way.

 

[Noodles]

People also get used to Sci-Fi, where you can take your thick dinner plate and just, "blast off" into space and to another planet.

 

[Free]

This was not on the schedule Dakota listed.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

YOU GUYS

THERE ARE HUMANS

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOON

RIGHT NOW

 

[Free]

But only like 4 of them. Not much at all, if you think about it. Statistically, almost none.

 

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Jerad Walker (@jeradwalker.bsky.social)

What a beautiful moment. [contains quote post or other embedded content]

bsky.app

Holy cow. Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman just officially named a moon crater “Carroll” in honor of his wife who passed away in 2020.

but also