Tag: nasa

Where is Artemis II Now?

The Artemis II mission is well underway. The Orion Capsule with its crew of four humans (unlike Artemis I which was crewed by four manikins) launched atop NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) last night and boy do I hope I have all of these terms correct. Oh well.

Did I see the launch? No. I live near Boston which means while the rocket was blasting its way toward the stars down in Florida I was stuck in stupidly awful traffic on route 128. You know, like you do.

Despite my traffic woes, Artemis II launched and made it into orbit. That leaves me with a new question. Where are they now? Turns out NASA kind of has an answer, thought the reality of it was a little underwhelming.

NASA’s Artemis Real-time Orbit Website (AROW) let’s you track where the capsule and its four astronauts are at any given moment. Can you imagine how much internet traffic a page like that would have had back in July of 1969 when Apollo 11 was making its trip to the moon? Or at least how much internet traffic it would have seen if internet traffic actually existed. You know what I mean though. You’re pickin’ up what I’m puttin’ down, right?

I’m somewhat underwhelmed by the site. At least so far. I don’t know if its the site itself or if its just getting slammed with visitors or what, but it is unbelievably slow for me right now and it took a really long time before I could do anything at all. Once it loaded though, it gave me some cool stats. Right now they are 35,553 miles from Earth, 235,997 miles from the Moon, and they are traveling at a brisk 3,841 miles per hour. May the rest of the world pardon my use of English units. We’re ass backwards Americans in these parts after all.

Check out the site and have fun keeping an eye on things as they travel to the moon, do a lap, and then come home safely. Space exploration is super freakin’ fun, even when the mission is just a test drive. Enjoy!

Launch Day

I’m sitting at my desk at work and the lights just went out. It wasn’t a power failure, it was just that none of us moved enough to trip the motion sensors that turn on the lights.

Sigh.

Hey, we’re going to the moon! The Artemis II mission is about an hour away from its launch window. I’ve been putzing around social media for the last 25 minutes or so and I think I just saw that the crew was loaded into the Orion Capsule. Assuming we don’t abort, they won’t leave the capsule for 10 days or so. They will fly into Earth orbit, circle the globe a couple of times, then head off to the moon. They aren’t landing (that will be Artemis III), they are just circling around once and then heading back.

This is just a test mission. It’s basically the same mission as Artemis I. The main difference is episode I had manikins for crew while episode II has humans. Four of them. Three Americans and a Canadian.

The launch window opens at 6:24pm Eastern time. It is currently 5:32pm Eastern time. The weather forecast is mostly sunny and warm. Things are looking good right now, but there is still plenty of time for issues to pop up.

Fingers crossed they launch tonight, circle the moon, and come home safely.

Moon Landing: Imminent?

There is about to be an attempt to soft land a lunar lander onto the moon. 300 kilometers from the South pole. If it is successful it will be the first time a private company pulled it off, and it will also be the furthest South anything has landed. Given that there appears to be ice in a crater at the South pole, that’s pretty gigantic in its significance.

The lander was sent up by a company called Intuitive Machines and of course it will be timed to happen while I am stuck in traffic on this evening’s commute so I won’t be able to try and follow it live.

Here’s hoping that when I get home I will learn about the first USA based craft to soft land on the moon since the last Apollo mission back in 1972.

Fingers astronomically crossed.

Flashback to a Recurring Nightmare

I grew up during the cold war. I wasn’t concerned that nuclear war might happen, I was positive that it inevitably would. You remember how things were, right?

I had a recurring nightmare. It happened every so often. I would be outside with friends and family, just hanging out and doing stuff. We’d all look up in the sky and see a rocket heading in our general direction. I, and I assume all of us, knew exactly what it was. Our number was up. We’d watch in silence as the warhead at the top of the rocket drifted ballistically into our neighborhood and then vaporized all of us.

Last Monday, while we were at the after hours event at Magic Kingdom, a big chunk of that nightmare came true. Everything except the warhead vaporizing us part. We were all walking near the Merry Go Round when we saw something that looked exactly like the rocket in my nightmare climbing into the sky.

DSC_0706

It flew across the sky, broke into three pieces, and then the middle piece continued in the same direction while the two on the sides curled off in opposite directions. Given that I am here writing this you can assume that nuclear weapons did not destroy central Florida and that we survived the holocaust.

I figured it out quickly, but there was a fraction of a second there where I was 100% positive that my old 80’s cold war nightmare was finally coming true. Someone near us found the truth on Google. Space X had a launch scheduled for that night at about that time, and that’s absolutely what we saw.

DSC_0707

It was awesome. Absolutely awesome. Ignoring the douchey Elon Musk asshole connection, it was the second coolest thing I’ve seen in the sky above Florida.

The coolest thing I’ve seen in the sky above Florida was of course the Space Shuttle launch on May 31, 2008. That still takes the cake for three reasons.

  1. It was NASA, not Space X
  2. It was during the day
  3. It did not involve anything even remotely related to that putz Elon Musk.
May 31, 2008 - Chef Mickey's and the Space Shuttle Launch
That’s a Space Shuttle there, folks. A real live NASA Space Shuttle.

Where is Artemis 1 Right Now?

Yeah yeah yeah, I said I was going to stop using twitter, but sometimes I just want another app to format a link for me and CounterSocial isn’t working with WordPress.com yet so twitter it is.

Artemis Looks Back

Did you all wave when Artemis 1 took your picture?

Artemis 1

After a slew of delays NASA launched the Artemis 1 mission over night last night. It’s just a test, but it’s a step toward returning to the moon, folks! Let’s Freakin’ Gooooo!!!

Artemis I: Scrubbed

I’m pretty disappointed. NASA was supposed to launch it’s first Artemis mission today. It was going to test the Orion capsule and the SLS rocket (I think I have those titles correct, but I could be off somewhere) by launching it into lunar orbit and bringing it home. It is an unmanned mission, apart from a few mannequins, but it’s the first big test for the setup that should eventually put people back on the surface of the moon.

No dice though. No launch today. Hopefully they’ll have their issue (something to do with fueling, I think) sorted out soon and we’ll get our test. Fingers crossed, NASA.

Amazing View

NASA did a Live Stream event today (it might still be going on, not sure) to release the first official images taken by the Webb Telescope.

Spectacular is a massive understatement.

Yeah… color me dazzled. Thanks, Webb!