A quick update from the solar system’s coolest road trip: the Artemis II mission just set a new distance record, going farther into space than the Apollo 13 astronauts did in 1970.
“There was a moment about an hour ago where Mission Control Houston reoriented our spacecraft as the sun was setting behind the Earth. And I don’t know what we all expected to see at that moment, but you could see the entire globe, from pole to pole. You could see Africa, Europe, and if you looked really close, you could see the northern lights. It was the most spectacular moment, and it paused all four of us in our tracks.” — mission commander Reid Wiseman
The Artemis II Orion spacecraft has launched, and the mission is underway!
There is also a livestream from Orion itself (claustrophobes need not apply), but availability is spotty due to bandwidth and popularity. Because space!
The countdown has begun! Tomorrow is the first April launch date for the Artemis II flight. (If the weather or tech doesn’t cooperate, the mission will be pushed forward, so the next couple of days could be interesting!)
The countdown for NASA’s Artemis II test flight is underway at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with members of the launch team arriving at their consoles inside the Rocco Petrone Launch Control Center. The onsite countdown clock started ticking down at 4:44 p.m. EDT to a targeted launch time of 6:24 p.m. on Wednesday, April 1.
The Americans who blazed the trail to the moon more than half a century ago were white men chosen for their military test pilot experience. This first Artemis crew includes a woman, a person of color and a Canadian, products of a more diversified astronaut corps.
Speaking of the comparison to Apollo, what else is different, how are they similar, is that an excellent graphic showing time and trajectory (yes!) and more:
NASA has announced that Artemis II’s journey around the Moon will be available to track online and via a downloadable app called Artemis Real-time Orbit Website (AROW).
And here’s what it will be like inside Firing Room 1 a.k.a. Mission Control:
…who has the Artemis II astronauts’ backs as they make the 10-day, roughly 685,000-mile journey around the moon, aboard a rocket and spacecraft that haven’t carried humans before? And what does it take to work in the high-stakes, behind-the-scenes roles that keep astronauts safe and the mission on track?
Because astronauts are just the most visible part of what it takes to get a project like this off the ground. Here’s to the engineers, adventurers, and dreamers too!
Because it can sometimes be hard to keep a positive attitude with everything going on in the world, I thought I’d share this article. Also, books are just a good time.
Reading is relaxing, and many people do it as a counterbalance to our overstimulated age.
But what exactly is happening when we read? What’s going on beneath the surface that makes reading a book feel so restorative?
The answer lies in how reading changes our neurochemistry in real time. Reading isn’t just about decoding words on a page. It’s a complex neurochemical process that affects everything from our heart rate to our hormone levels.
Go ahead, change your neurochemistry for the better.
Every spring, thousands of fish swim through the Oudegracht in Utrecht, searching for a place upstream to lay their eggs. But the Weerdsluis is often closed. You can help the fish continue their journey! If you see a fish, press the doorbell. This alerts the lock operator to open the lock.
Tomorrow morning very early, the last full moon of the winter season will coincide with a total lunar eclipse. When? Check the links below for precise times, but as an example, maximum eclipse in Ottawa will be at 6:33am ET.
The result? A blood moon.
We’ve talked about this phenomenon before, but this will be the last one for a couple of years.
Visible from Asia, Australia, and North America, this is the last total lunar eclipse until the December 31, 2028–January 1, 2029 New Year’s Blood Moon Eclipse.
If your view is obstructed you can watch this livestream from the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.
Sadly, the Artemis II moon mission has been pushed back again, and the new launch window now won’t happen until April at the earliest. Pesky helium flow issues!
Happily, this week we can entertain ourselves with a planetary conjunction!
Look up this week and see a whole bunch of planets. Just after sunset, looking west (mostly), planets Mercury, Venus, Saturn, and Jupiter will all be visible to the unaided eye simultaneously.
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