Artemis Astronauts Enter Moon's Gravitational Pull, Catch First Glimpses of Far Side (nbcnews.com) 88
NASA's Artemis astronauts are now entering "the lunar sphere of influence," reports NBC News, "meaning the pull of the moon's gravity will become stronger than Earth's." Now as they begin their swing around the moon, the Artemis astronauts "are chasing after Apollo 13's maximum range from Earth," reports the Associated Press, hoping to beat its distance from Earth by more than 4,100 miles (6,600 kilometers).
They'll begin their six-hour lunar flyby 14 hours from now (at 2:45 p.m. ET Monday). But in a space-to-earth interview Saturday with NBC News, the astronauts were already describing their first glimpses of the edge of the far side: [NASA astronaut Christina Koch realized] it looked different from what she was accustomed to on Earth. "The darker parts just aren't quite in the right place," she said. "And something about you senses that is not the moon that I'm used to seeing...."
[Astronaut Reid] Wiseman called the flight a "magnificent accomplishment" and said the astronauts' ability to gaze at both Earth and the moon from their spacecraft has been "truly awe-inspiring." "The Earth is almost in full eclipse. The moon is almost in full daylight, and the only way you could get that view is to be halfway between the two entities," he said... And while the early photos of Earth and the moon that [Canadian astronaut Jeremy] Hansen and his colleagues have beamed back have been spectacular, the Canadian astronaut said they pale in comparison to the real deal outside their capsule's windows. "I know those photos are amazing," he said, "but let me assure you, it is another level of amazing up here."
And their upcoming six-hour lunar flyby "promises views of the moon's far side that were too dark or too difficult to see by the 24 Apollo astronauts who preceded them," notes the Associated Press: A total solar eclipse also awaits them as the moon blocks the sun, exposing snippets of shimmering corona.... At closest approach, they will come within 4,070 miles (6,550 kilometers) of the moon. Because they launched on April 1, the rendezvous won't have as much of the far lunar side illuminated as other dates would have. But the crew still will be able make out "definite chunks of the far side that have never been seen" by humans, said NASA geologist Kelsey Young, including a good portion of Orientale Basin.
They'll call down their observations as they photograph the gray, pockmarked scenes. There's a suite of professional-quality cameras on board, and each astronaut also has an iPhone for more informal, spur-of-the-minute picture-taking... Orion will be out of contact with Mission Control for nearly an hour when it's behind the moon. The same thing happened during the Apollo moonshots. NASA is relying on its Deep Space Network to communicate with the crew, but the giant antennas in California, Spain and Australia won't have a direct line of sight when Orion disappears behind the moon for approximately 40 minutes...
Once Artemis II departs the lunar neighborhood, it will take four days to return home. The capsule will aim for a splashdown in the Pacific near San Diego on April 10, nine days after its Florida launch. During the flight back, the astronauts will link up via radio with the crew of the orbiting International Space Station. This is the first time that a moon crew has colleagues in space at the same time and NASA can't pass up the opportunity for a cosmic chitchat.
They'll begin their six-hour lunar flyby 14 hours from now (at 2:45 p.m. ET Monday). But in a space-to-earth interview Saturday with NBC News, the astronauts were already describing their first glimpses of the edge of the far side: [NASA astronaut Christina Koch realized] it looked different from what she was accustomed to on Earth. "The darker parts just aren't quite in the right place," she said. "And something about you senses that is not the moon that I'm used to seeing...."
[Astronaut Reid] Wiseman called the flight a "magnificent accomplishment" and said the astronauts' ability to gaze at both Earth and the moon from their spacecraft has been "truly awe-inspiring." "The Earth is almost in full eclipse. The moon is almost in full daylight, and the only way you could get that view is to be halfway between the two entities," he said... And while the early photos of Earth and the moon that [Canadian astronaut Jeremy] Hansen and his colleagues have beamed back have been spectacular, the Canadian astronaut said they pale in comparison to the real deal outside their capsule's windows. "I know those photos are amazing," he said, "but let me assure you, it is another level of amazing up here."
And their upcoming six-hour lunar flyby "promises views of the moon's far side that were too dark or too difficult to see by the 24 Apollo astronauts who preceded them," notes the Associated Press: A total solar eclipse also awaits them as the moon blocks the sun, exposing snippets of shimmering corona.... At closest approach, they will come within 4,070 miles (6,550 kilometers) of the moon. Because they launched on April 1, the rendezvous won't have as much of the far lunar side illuminated as other dates would have. But the crew still will be able make out "definite chunks of the far side that have never been seen" by humans, said NASA geologist Kelsey Young, including a good portion of Orientale Basin.
They'll call down their observations as they photograph the gray, pockmarked scenes. There's a suite of professional-quality cameras on board, and each astronaut also has an iPhone for more informal, spur-of-the-minute picture-taking... Orion will be out of contact with Mission Control for nearly an hour when it's behind the moon. The same thing happened during the Apollo moonshots. NASA is relying on its Deep Space Network to communicate with the crew, but the giant antennas in California, Spain and Australia won't have a direct line of sight when Orion disappears behind the moon for approximately 40 minutes...
Once Artemis II departs the lunar neighborhood, it will take four days to return home. The capsule will aim for a splashdown in the Pacific near San Diego on April 10, nine days after its Florida launch. During the flight back, the astronauts will link up via radio with the crew of the orbiting International Space Station. This is the first time that a moon crew has colleagues in space at the same time and NASA can't pass up the opportunity for a cosmic chitchat.
Is it worth it to put a manned crew on the craft? (Score:1)
After reading about all the effort and expense that went into fitting the craft with a bathroom, you have to wonder if it's worthwhile to include a human crew on these planned moon missions.
Re: Is it worth it to put a manned crew on the cra (Score:2)
It certainly is, IF... (Score:5, Insightful)
you want human beings to ever be anything more than scurrying about on Earth becoming gradually better at killing each other until they eventually succeed or the sun burns out (your choice).
Here's the thing: ANY human voyage to any other place in the universe will be vastly more difficult and dangerous and require more time away from Terra Firma. Therefore, the Moon is a perfect place to learn what we need to learn, and to practice (and get good at) the things we will need to be excellent at in order to manage ANY further exploration. If we cannot get the toilet right on a lunar mission, then any other space destination is right out. We could learn all the same lessons with a destination like Mars, BUT that would be vastly more expensive, and take a huge amount of additional time (each flight would take months vs days, and the launch windows are years apart rather than weeks apart). This is what even Elon Musk has recently surrendered to. When we have mastered the regular lunar flights with sustained time on the lunar surface, we will finally know how to learn to do Mars without going bankrupt and killing lots of crews.
Its really all about logistics (Score:4, Informative)
Toss in some local acquisition and processing of resources at some point. Ex H2 O2 -- for air, water, and fuel.
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If you already have a space station in Earth orbit, why do you need one in Lunar orbit too?
Why would you not seek to do your interplanetary burn direct from Earth orbit, like we have done with literally every single thing we've ever sent to Mars?
Not being snarky, just wondering if there is some delta-V advantage to being higher up the well, but in a different (lesser) well.
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If you already have a space station in Earth orbit, why do you need one in Lunar orbit too?
- Specialization and optimization, ie cost reduction, on each leg (up, across, down).
- Expansion, servicing flights to/from asteroids.
Why would you not seek to do your interplanetary burn direct from Earth orbit, like we have done with literally every single thing we've ever sent to Mars?
I would expect flights to mars to eventually be originating from both earth and the moon. Different missions, different needs. Plus the moon is also its own destination independent of mars.
Not being snarky, just wondering if there is some delta-V advantage to being higher up the well, but in a different (lesser) well.
I'm thinking payloads. Something mined/manufactured on the moon useful to mars. At least until we get good at mining asteroids.
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The stated goal of Lunar Gateway is developing expertise in human crewed long-duration deep space missions, an admirable one, but not entirely committed to Lunar exploitation
My expectations for long-term egress from the moon involve a mass accelerator, which could shove human cargo a bit less aggressively than cargo, towards either Earth or Mars
This would involve raw material exploitation on the moon and an active market for those materials on Mars, or even Earth if the economies of scale work out...
These t
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You conveniently did not mention the real obstacles to get to Mars: radiation and human physiology and human psychology. They are killers. The radiation from here to Mars is not the milk-toast we get around Earth which has the Van Allen belts. Mars has none. But that is not the biggest radiation problem, that is the radiation from the rest of the Universe which hates us. That's the real industrial strength radiation and we have no way to stop. Sure you can encase your vehicle in lead or water but then you h
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Perhaps you should read that radiation thing a bit up. ...
Especially the Van-Allen-Belt part
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Water is a heck of a thing, about a foot of it will stop most cosmic rays, and you can drink it as well
Turns out we are made of it, and will need to carry a lot of it with us, even with recycling, so simply placing the water storage between the crew compartments and potential sources of cosmic rays will eliminate this concern
Yippee!
In regards to our adaptations for gravity, we need to confirm that we can tolerate centripetal 'simulation' of gravity for journeys, and .6G Martian gravity
I am pretty sure you w
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Why would you need to bring it down to Earth background levels? Humans can survive considerably higher than that.
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Now only if there was some way that they could bring enough water for the multi-month trip to Mars, and have that water also be used for secondary purposes like radiation shielding...
These are engineering problems. Engineers haven't started working on them outside of "well how about..." because we don't have any funding for manned Mars spacefilght, just the same as nobody was working on lunar landers until there was a manned spaceflight mission to put people on the moon.
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You conveniently did not mention the real obstacles to get to Mars: radiation and human physiology and human psychology. They are killers.
Maybe you might be taken a bit more seriously if you A. didn't act like you had some special, secret knowledge when everyone here already knows that there's radiation in space. B. Actually presented some numbers about actual expected radiation dose in the situations you mentioned and compared them to known human radiation tolerances and standards (such as for radiation workers in power plants, etc.) and C. actually considered the radiation mitigation strategies that are already employed and proposed for fut
Humans are more capable on site .... (Score:5, Interesting)
Also a big part of these missions is to develop and test the tech necessary for manned missions.
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Like you say, there are pros and cons, but unless the long term goal is colonization, the cost/benefit analysis tends to argue against manned missions.
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Like you say, there are pros and cons, but unless the long term goal is colonization, the cost/benefit analysis tends to argue against manned missions.
I don't think colonization is the only justification. Sometimes the science will benefit too.
Re: Is it worth it to put a manned crew on the cra (Score:1, Insightful)
better use than putting failing toilets on an aircraft carrier to plunder other peoples' oil.
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Why did someone try to censor that comment? Not the strongest FP, but whose political sensitivities did you manage to offend? (Maybe another approach to fixing the moderation would be to remove the anonymity?)
I actually think you are touching on a big question there. Why? I think it's basically because they didn't want to have a gap with no living humans who had been to the moon. They're getting old and dying off and that basically created a kind of fake pressure on Congress to fund Artemis, even though Ame
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How come DOGE didn't manage to kill this one?
DOGE's mission was not getting rid of "waste, fraud, and abuse". Their mission was the removal and/or neutering of any government body that could have stopped or slowed down the orange grifter's activities. Musk benefited as well, so bully for him.
Taking a chainsaw to other agencies that actually helped people that are less fortunate was just icing on the cake. Taking that funding away meant more to go towards the One Big Beautiful Bill for Billionaires. Cruelty is not just a side effect for these assho
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Not disagreeing, but mostly feeling a need to clarify an aspect I didn't mention.
As regards your reply, I actually heard that part of the reason Artemis was able to go forward was that the YOB signed another Executive Order. On those occasions when the puppet does something that appears good I remain suspicious, but I suspect most of those lucky breaks could be traced back to that female chief of staff. She seems relatively sane compared to the rest of 'em and I can imagine her appealing to "your legacy, Yo
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Yes, because it's never a good idea to solve issues like this early on incrementally more difficult missions. I want them figuring out the fucking space toilet right in the middle of landing on the surface myself.
What an absolutely stupid thing to say on a tech site where I would bet the vast majority of readers practice incremental development every single day.
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My friend, the whole point of these missions is to test and refine the equipment engineered specifically for transporting humans to the moon.
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"Putting humans on the moon" is not the whole point. That's simply a means to an end, and it's only one option for a means to that end. Unmanned spacecraft is another option, one that doesn't suffer the many downsides of fitting out these craft for humans.
The fact is the human crew is there for political reasons. It spurs interest in the space program, regardless of whether it makes cost/benefit sense.
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Under Artemis, NASA will send astronauts on increasingly difficult missions to explore more of the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build on our foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars.
-NASA
I'm curious to know how you believe this is achieved without sending humans off of the Earth.
Did they find.. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Did they find.. (Score:5, Funny)
..the secret nazi moon base with space nazi's?
Spazis?
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..the secret nazi moon base with space nazi's?
No, this is the first in the missions for the Orange Nazi to build his moon base.
Re:Did they find.. (Score:4, Funny)
The entire mission is obviously an AI fake. As acclaimed physicist Joe Rogan explained, they crew would be dead once they'd hit the Van Allen Radiation Belt (tm)
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That should've been obvious by the fake globe Earth image [nasa.gov] they reportedly sent back after launching.
The earth is flat. Not a globe. The fact they had to publish this image shows the whole thing is fake.
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No, they only found the cow tools.
Enter Moon's Gravitational Pull? (Score:1)
Hey Editor, did you miss the lesson about tides in school? :-)
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The "Nerds" part.
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'NASA's Artemis astronauts have entered "the lunar sphere of influence"' would be better.
54 Years to Do Less (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:54 Years to Do Less (Score:4, Informative)
Re:54 Years to Do Less (Score:5, Insightful)
What changed is everything around the physics.
You almost figured it out. It's almost like when we use a completely different vehicle where everything including all technology inside is different that you want to test things slowly before jumping feet first down on the moon.
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Missions STS-51-L (Challenger) and STS-107 (Columbia).
Until policy changes from "safety at all costs" to "humans dying in possible one-way missions is an acceptable part of pioneering, fly it again tomorrow", you will have endless reviews, delays and cancellations on top of those already inherent in government projects. The government layer is probably the biggest reason, which is why alongside the government/NASA projects we have a private company that can get personnel to and from the space station at muc
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Only hateful individual I'm seeing here is you, using the same stupid hateful dipshittery twice now.
You have no idea what the selection criteria was, and how it was applied. The NASA Director of manned flight operations knows, and that's who ultimately selects the crew.
You, and everyone else in this thread, is speaking out of ignorance and stupidity.
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You talk as if NASA just up and went to the moon in a matter of months in the late 1960s. Despite JFK's speech, the preparation to go to the moon began a long time before, and involved three separate families of rockets. Mercury, Gemini, and finally Apollo. It was really Gemini that that developed the technologies that eventually made the moon landing possible. There were a lot of test flights. Granted back then there was more political will than there is now. But it was always a battle with Congress
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You talk as if NASA just up and went to the moon in a matter of months in the late 1960s. Despite JFK's speech
Fair point about political will but let's be clear about the timelines:
- From Sputnik to Apollo 11 boots on the ground was about 12 years.
- George W Bush announced the new moon program in 2004, over 20 years ago, and we haven't hit the moon yet. Good thing since we don't have a lander.
It's fake. Clearly. (Score:4, Funny)
If you thought what they could fake in the late 60's was impressive, imagine what they an do now.
It just sucks to see them screw up the illusion with such trivial mistakes. Are you seriously expecting me to believe they'd go with a broken toilet? Or use Outlook?
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If you thought what they could fake in the late 60's was impressive, imagine what they an do now.
It just sucks to see them screw up the illusion with such trivial mistakes. Are you seriously expecting me to believe they'd go with a broken toilet? Or use Outlook?
Or iPhones?
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" imagine what they an do now."
We don't have Stanley Kubrick any more, just Steven Spielberg. That's why all the astronauts have to be divorced moms.
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It's a Boeing spacecraft, so yes I absolutely believe they'd go with a broken toilet.
If that's the only thing broken, it's the best one they ever manufactured.
What, this 'Far Side'? (Score:4, Funny)
https://www.thefarside.com/ [thefarside.com]
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Interesting thing to note though is that you can actually see nearly 60% of the moon from Earth, just not all at the same time. Since the orbit of the Moon is slightly elliptical, it appears to rock slightly from the point of view of Earth, letting you see a bit more on one side or the other. Also, you can see a tiny bit over the lunar poles from high and low latitudes on Earth.
I hope they have a good sound system (Score:2)
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Insofar as the word "dark" being used to imply "mysterious" or "obscured from sight" it can still be valid.
I want high resolution photos (Score:2)
Billions $ for a few people to look at the moon (Score:2)
What a waste of money. /s
This is a pure vanity project. We need the money here on earth to bomb our neighbors.
say wha? (Score:3)
If you have to go that far to "enter moon's gravitational pull," what really then is causing the tides on earth? Must be that actually, the earth is flat.
full moon, full earth (Score:2)
I'm just wondering how they simultaneously got pictures of a full moon and a full earth on the way to the moon.
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Because they can change the spacecraft's attitude to put whatever they want into the window while flying along the same trajectory?
Guess what, they probably could have taken a picture of the full sun too. Amazing what you can do when you are somewhere in the 360,000 kilometers between Earth and Luna.
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I'm just wondering how they simultaneously got pictures of a full moon and a full earth on the way to the moon.
The cool photo of the Earth was a long exposure of the night side illuminated by the Moon's reflected light. It's why you can see stars and Venus in the photo as well.