Tomorrow night is the second full moon of May, which makes it a blue moon. They are rare but not very, as they happen every two or three years. The next one won’t happen until December 2028.
People who step outside at the end of the month to catch a glimpse of the rare lunar event should also be able to spot Venus and Jupiter in the western sky about an hour after sunset. Meanwhile, early risers should be able to see Mars and Saturn in the eastern sky about an hour before daybreak.
I wanted to let you know a day ahead of time in case you, like me, like to have these things on your calendar!
Some space veterans seemed to find this scent quite pleasant. “It is hard to describe this smell; it is definitely not the olfactory equivalent of describing the palate sensations of some new food that ‘tastes like chicken.’
Yes, these are the things I find interesting about space. Not the math (with apologies to all my math teachers ever) or the physics (with apologies to all the classes I never took), but the lived experience.
When I’m thinking about a story and need to ground the reader, this sort of information is useful. What would it feel like, what would it taste like?
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!
Since my recent posts have spent a lot of time in space, let’s take a slight break from the nonfiction drama of NASA’s Artemis II mission and shift over to the fictional world of space adventure.
In his books, Andy Weir (The Martian) works hard to bring scientific accuracy to his fiction. The challenge is balancing the demands of a thrilling story with the science that grounds it in reality.
While “Project Hail Mary” has its share of explosions and catastrophes, it’s the thinking that’s thrilling. Grace and Rocky must come together, with tools and whiteboards, craft and ingenuity, to solve a seemingly insoluble problem. They make mistakes, but they learn from those mistakes and from each other.
… when I walked out of a recent preview screening of the film adaptation of Andy Weir’s 2021 science fiction novel Project Hail Mary, I had tears of joy in my eyes. The filmmakers had done justice not just to the original story, but also to the science at the heart of it.
From NASA, with lots of interesting subsidiary links:
Let NASA shed some light: Explore the resources below to learn the science facts fueling the science fiction.
(Wait, Tau Ceti was also featured in fiction by Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert, Robert Heinlein, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Kim Stanley Robinson? And was the setting for Barbarella? This planet gets around!)
The final assessment of the science? Not perfect, but good. And precisely accurate or not, this promises to be another very entertaining movie. (I’ve read the book but haven’t seen the film yet. Yes, I am a little behind the curve!)
Since we’re here, how about an article on the movie as a climate parable? (warning, spoilers!)
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!
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.
We’ve lived in this house for years but this morning I discovered something new. Some confluence of sun angle, time of day and positioning meant that the lampshade in the kitchen reflected a rainbow-colored series of textured light onto the ceiling. It was both joyful and unexpected, reminding me that there is beauty everywhere.
If I look.
Speaking of reflected light, there’s a full moon tonight.
Tonight’s moon is known by many names, including the Wolf Moon, Cold Moon, and Snow Moon. We may finally have clear skies tonight, too, and I’m looking forward to looking up.
February’s Full Snow Moon reaches peak illumination at 5:09 P.M. EST on Sunday, February 1. Step outside after dusk to see the Full Moon in all of its glory!
Since we’re here, I’ll share a link that led to a flurry of conversation in my family.
On July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 Lunar Module with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin aboard touched down on the surface of the Moon 4 days, 6 hours, and 45 minutes after having launched from Cape Canaveral. At 02:56:15 GMT, Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on another celestial body.
My parents were remembering where they were when it happened (at the next-door neighbor’s in Michigan, because they didn’t have a television), and what it felt like to watch the landing. Uplifting.
And looking ahead, NASA’s first crewed mission around the moon in over half a century will be happening soon.
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