And to save you from tracking down one of the many (many) space-themed Artemis links I’ve put up over the past couple of days, you can watch tonight’s homecoming here starting at 6:30pm EDT!
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!
Sadly, it looks like the Ispace lander Resilience did not make a successful landing on the moon yesterday. (If it did land, it’s harboring enough resentment about the process that it’s refusing to pick up the phone.)
Ispace has gone out of its way to make clear that it’s not giving up. The motto underpinning today’s mission was “never quit the lunar quest.” And by all accounts, the company has every intention of sticking with these moon missions until they succeed.
Let this be a lesson to all you aspiring creatives out there. Never quit! (And maybe name the next lander Persistence?)
March’s full moon, known as the Worm Moon, will pass into Earth’s shadow on the night of March 13, or early on March 14, depending on the time zone, according to NASA. This eclipse will be visible from Earth’s Western Hemisphere.
While the peak of the eclipse will happen in the middle of the night (my time, at least), we should be able to see the event begin as the red(dish) moon rises around 7pm.
Why red? The color can vary based on the Moon’s path and the Earth’s atmosphere. The shade is measured on the Danjon Scale, which is a thing I hadn’t heard of but absolutely needed to know!
Earth’s atmosphere contains varying amounts of water (clouds, mist, precipitation) and solid particles (dust, organic debris, volcanic ash). This material filters and attenuates the sunlight before it’s refracted into the umbra. For instance, large or frequent volcanic eruptions dumping huge quantities of ash into the atmosphere are often followed by very dark, red eclipses for several years. Extensive cloud cover along Earth’s limb also tends to darken the eclipse by blocking sunlight.
The moon will be officially full at 8:53 a.m. EST on Wednesday (Feb. 12) and will be best seen at dusk at the moment of moonrise where you are. It will be in the constellation Leo, hanging above the bright star Regulus.
And since we’re talking storms, if you’ve ever wondered why some bring snow while others bring sleet or freezing rain, check this out: Severe Weather 101: Winter Weather Types.
We may not be able to see the moon tonight, if the storm is as dramatic as predicted, but it’s nice to know it’s up there!
As we’re right around the full (super!) moon this weekend (and I’m knee-deep in tech and tax stuff, super fun), here’s a composite image of the moon with amazing detail.
The self-taught Kurdish astrophotographer amassed 81,000 images, which he stitched into a 708-gigabyte composite revealing the intricacies of the lunar topography in stunningly high resolution.
Scroll down through the images to be impressed by the work of this self-taught astrophotographer.
The best times to view the event will depend on your location, but the lunar eclipse will peak at 10:44 p.m. ET, according to NASA. All of North and South America will have a chance to see the partial lunar eclipse and harvest supermoon depending on the weather. Europe and Africa will also have an opportunity to see the eclipse.
As the full Moon closest to the autumnal equinox, this is the Harvest Moon. The first known written use of this name in the English language (per the Oxford English Dictionary) was in 1706. During the fall harvest season farmers sometimes need to work late into the night by moonlight. On average moonrise is about 50 minutes later each night. Around the Harvest Moon this time is shorter, about 25 minutes for the latitude of Washington, DC, and only 10 to 20 minutes farther north in Canada and Europe.
Here is some general info on eclipses and a fun video from NASA.
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And as for that more-or-less moon related bonus item? It’s a tasty one.
Mr Man and I went for a lovely if hot hike down by the river, and decided that the best way to cap it off would be with ice cream. We found ourselves at Chris’s Ice Cream Ottawa.
This fun little shop had a number of interesting and creative flavors, including blood orange, chili chocolate, strawberry crunch, and… hang on, what’s this?
I did not think I would like it. I did not think the flavors would work. In fact, they did more than work, as all three flavors combined into a new, better flavor.
I don’t quite know how to describe this “improbable” combination except as a structural shift. Imagine three individual flavors, normally experienced as if they were sequential, or side by side. When eaten together, however, the flavors stack together to create a singular new experience.
To supplement my previous post on the progress we’ve made imaging the far side of the Moon, here are a number of snapshots from the Artemis I Orion flyby.
I am working on story edits today and found myself needing to look up a lunar technicality. Next thing I know, I was reading a detailed account of the first lunar spacewalk at Tranquillity Base. I thought you might enjoy it too.
July 20, 1969: The day began on the farside of the Moon. Armstrong, Aldrin and crewmate Mike Collins flew their spaceship 60 miles above the cratered wasteland. No one on Earth can see the Moon’s farside. Even today it remains a land of considerable mystery, but the astronauts had no time for sight-seeing. Collins pressed a button, activating a set of springs, and the spaceship split in two. The half named Columbia, with Collins on board, would remain in orbit. The other half, the Eagle, spiraled over the horizon toward the Sea of Tranquillity.
“You are Go for powered descent,” Houston radioed…
This also got me thinking about the farside of the moon. We’ve learned a lot about it since these images in 1959:
Orion entered a distant lunar orbit on at 4:52 p.m. EST Friday, Nov. 25, where the spacecraft will remain for about a week to test systems in a deep space environment about 40,000 miles above the lunar surface before beginning the journey back to Earth.
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