Four astronauts are now inexorably bound for the Moon
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Ars Legatus Legionis
https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/artemis-ii-overview-timeline-public-final.pdf
The big one for most people would be moon closest approach which is MET +5D 01:23:20 or roughly 7PM ET (23:00 UTC) on 04/06 .
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It wasn’t just the East Germans. A lot of the other Warsaw Pact counties took part in the Intercosmos program. Some other Soviet allies like Cuba and Vietnam participated too. And later on, even western aligned countries, like France and Austria.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interkosmos
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It does seem odd that they chose a Canadian to fly on this mission rather than an ESA astronaut, considering the Orion service module is an ESA contribution.
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ESA has 3 future seats for the 6 ESMs they built. The ESA intentionally wanted them on later flights (art IV+). Canada seat comes from the contribution of the canadarm for gateway although hopefully that gets repurposed and isn't just scrapped.
None of NASA agreements with ESA involved seats on the lander but with the (likely) demise of gateway I have to imagine that is being renegotiated. In fact there is a lot of uncertainty all around. If SLS ends after art6 will there be future ESMs beyond the six that ESA is contracted to build? If Orion becomes a commercial crew vehicle possibly launching on NG will LM bring the SM portion in house? Even if they kept the ESM and contracted with ESA that would be a financial contract, LM can't grant ESA seats on future flights. Still artemis VI is probably 2033+ so time to figure it all out.
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New Outlook, the one that's basically Outlook Web Access running in a containerized browser (like New Teams). By default O365 installs got it months ago on Current Channel or more recently on Semi-Annual channel.
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Canada and the US space program have been intertwined since the very beginning. It was a flock of Canadian engineers, laid off by Avro when the CF-105 Arrow interceptor was scrapped in 1959, who went down to Langley with heaps of knowledge necessary to make the Mercury capsule's controls, systems, and project management work. They brought with them the freshly-invented fly-by-wire tech that made advanced spacecraft and aircraft possible. The two countries have been close collaborators ever since. Canadian money, engineering, talent, and equipment have been inextricably mixed with American money, engineering, talent, and equipment for over six decades. The Canadians don't object in the least to American patriotic flag-waving around this stuff – it's part of American culture, part of getting things done, and usually a good thing overall – but the Canadians do get a little miffed when they are actively disrespected and insulted by morons who don't understand anything about reality, as often seems to be the case when American officials of the present era are asked about it.
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New Outlook is such a steaming pile of wet mess that corporate IT now has a canned auto response "did you roll back to Outlook Classic and try again" for literally every helldesk ticket that touches outlook.
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So, if you're going to the moon you drink a lot of coffee and then don't pee before leaving?
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One pretty cool feature of the ESA built ESM is that it has wing tip cameras on the edge of the solar panel wings. The wings can pivot forward and back. Orion primarily uses that feature to reduce lateral g loading on the panels durings burns. NASA has also been pivoting the wings forward from time to time in order to take selfies of Orion forand backwards to observe the propulsion end of the ESM for analysis.
It is pretty rare for a spacecraft to be able to take a picture of itself in space.
It is pretty rare for a spacecraft to be able to take a picture of itself in space.
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I keep reading it as "inexorably bound to the Moon" which would be a euphemism for their spacecraft splatted into the Moon.
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NASA released this photo that Reid took.
No human has had a vantage like that in 50 years. We never should have left the moon but I am so glad we are going back.
No human has had a vantage like that in 50 years. We never should have left the moon but I am so glad we are going back.
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There are significant concerns whether an abort due to SRB failure would be survivable. The Shuttle SRBs never failed in flight, but others have. When a liquid rocket fails, you have dispersed propellant that either combusts quickly, or spreads out and cools below ignition temperature and becomes relatively harmless. When a solid motor fails, it’s like kicking over a charcoal grill, and you’re left with hot slowly-burning embers scattered across the sky. Trying to parachute through that would be fatal.
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The burn changed the velocity by 1,274 ft/s in 5 minutes and 50 seconds, so 3.64 ft/s^2 or about 0.11g.
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To a degree but that is why the LAS on Orion is so comically oversized. It is 7 tons compared to the 2 ton LAS on Apollo (which was a heavier spacecraft). It has a stupidly high dV for a LAS and would throw Orion multiple kilometers down range.
However hopefully someday Orion flies on something without SRBs. Even knowing all the logic and engineering seeing Challenge explode live as a kid in school is something that never goes away. I breathed a little easier once they had SRB burnout and separation.
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ESA have been putting engineering cameras on their last few probes, e.g. Bepi Colombo. So during Earth gravity assist flybys, you get these really awkwardly framed shots of home.
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NASA released a second hi-res shot of Earth.
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While no one on this mission will step on the moon, it is exciting that NASA is testing for an eventual landing. After watching several videos of how a landing will be accomplished in the future and how complicated sending the Orion capsule and a separate lander/return module to be docked with in lunar orbit it puts just how crazy the Apollo Missions were.
I'm here for this. I support my tax dollars doing these things.
I'm here for this. I support my tax dollars doing these things.
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Just last week we had to upgrade to the new outlook because the classic outlook from office 2019 was no longer able to log into the microsoft servers.
Then, for the new outlook to access the enterprise emails we had to upgrade to O365 A3 subscriptions per person.
Welcome to the Microsoft world.
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What does this mean? I could use more explanation.
It seems to be referencing two separate objects, and/or I don’t understand rocket speak, which is likely.
It seems to be referencing two separate objects, and/or I don’t understand rocket speak, which is likely.
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Am I the only one who wondered if Howard Wolowitz was consulted on the fix for the loo?
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Yes two objects. They performed proximity operations to simulate docking procedures. That is they flew the Orion spacecraft close to and away from the ICPS. The ICPS is the upper stage of the SLS which put them into orbit after which they seperated from it.
NASA put ranging and docking indicators on the upper stage to give them targets to aim for. The pilot and commander had good thing to say with how Orion performed. Credit to ESA as the ESM was heavily involved. No repeat of the Starliner loss of control chaos.
In case you were confusing the upper stage (ICPS) with service module (ESM), the ESM is still attached to the Orion crew module where it will remain for the whole mission until just prior to re-entry. The ICPS is the upper stage which put the combined Orion spacecraft (crew module + ESM) into orbit.
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The Orion capsule is no longer attached to the upper stage that brought them up, but they were sharing an orbit so it was used as a maneuvering target for tests.
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How about believing in science, which is what got us there in the first place?
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10,427 km, 6,479 mi. Roughly "New York to Tokyo" distance.
This also means that Artemis II will break Apollo 13's record for deepest spaceflight, by about 6000km.
Also the first woman, person of color, and non-American to leave LEO.
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In English, inexorable/inexorably means "cannot be stopped" in some form another. Don't let the definition of a similar word from another language confuse you.
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If anyone else was struggling to figure out the orientation, the brownish land to the left is Africa, with Strait of Gibraltar below it with city lights around it. The greenish land on the right is South America.
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Everybody's making jokes, but I, for one, am just glad it was successfully troubleshat.
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As an older guy, I saw Walter Cronkite announcing Apollo Moon launches / landings.
Seeing multiple Artemis II videos, including the lengthy crew interview, brings back the same feelings of awe and appreciation.
There are moments when humanity can accomplish significant things. Science and exploration can be part of that. As the astronaut crew looks at the world, they know that troubling events continue to happen. That was true in the late 60s and early 70s then as it is today. But I keep in mind there are moments when humanity can work together to increase knowledge which is true in the deep oceans, the polar ice caps and in space.
Seeing multiple Artemis II videos, including the lengthy crew interview, brings back the same feelings of awe and appreciation.
There are moments when humanity can accomplish significant things. Science and exploration can be part of that. As the astronaut crew looks at the world, they know that troubling events continue to happen. That was true in the late 60s and early 70s then as it is today. But I keep in mind there are moments when humanity can work together to increase knowledge which is true in the deep oceans, the polar ice caps and in space.
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This and the full-disc crescent image literally teared me up, which I didn't expect as I've seen so many pictures of Earth from space over the decades... but somehow knowing it was just taken yesterday, by a person, triggered something deep.
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