The Space Thread - Launches, Events, Live Streams, Governments, Corporations, drama in Spaaaaaaaaaaaace

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The latest pic downloaded to the NASA website, taken earlier today.

art002e009276~large.jpg
 
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Wahgonga said:
The Orion crew have now traveled further away from the Earth than any other human in history.

Amazing stuff.
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This might be a dumb question, but how is that possible if we've supposedly been to the moon before, and had people walk on it?
Last I looked the current crew aren't even to the moon yet.
 
FatalTater said:
This might be a dumb question, but how is that possible if we've supposedly been to the moon before, and had people walk on it?
Last I looked the current crew aren't even to the moon yet.
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Not dumb. They're basically sling-shotting around the far side of the Moon for their flyby, so it takes them about 4600 miles beyond the Moon itself.
 
FatalTater said:
This might be a dumb question, but how is that possible if we've supposedly been to the moon before, and had people walk on it?
Last I looked the current crew aren't even to the moon yet.
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The moon has an elliptical orbit, so it's distance from the Earth varies from around 221,600 miles at it's closest, to around 252,000 miles at it's furthest. Today the moon is almost the furthest away it ever gets at about 251,900 miles from Earth. Pretty much all of the previous moon missions were done when the moon was at its closest to Earth.
 
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It's still hard to think that we've finally sent people moon-bound once again, and intend to keep doing so. I pray we don't get only a few landings and give it all up again for another 50 years.
 
Did I hear someone say that the moon has colors? Brown and green?
I'm going to need to see a color picture of the moon, NASA.
 
FatalTater said:
This might be a dumb question, but how is that possible if we've supposedly been to the moon before, and had people walk on it?
Last I looked the current crew aren't even to the moon yet.
Click to expand...

Visiting the moon involves going around it at least once, so that the moon is between you and Earth. This is the case whether you go around once (like Artemis 2 and Apollo 13), go into several orbits around the moon without landing (Apollo 8 & 10), or orbit around the moon several times and land (Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17). At some point in all these missions, you're on the other side of the moon (when viewed from Earth). How far depends on the mission.

Apollo 13 ended up swinging around the moon once and coming back to Earth (this wasn't the plan; there was an accident as we all know) and when they swung around the back of the moon, they traveled farther away from Earth than any of the other manned mission, until this afternoon.

Artemis 2 is basically doing the same thing Apollo 13 did (except it was planned this way) but they went even farther when they swung around the back of the moon.
 
Miang said:
Not dumb. They're basically sling-shotting around the far side of the Moon for their flyby, so it takes them about 4600 miles beyond the Moon itself.
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The reason the Orion crew broke the Apollo 13 record for being the furthest away from the Earth without having yet reached the moon is because of the moon's elliptical orbit, not the distance they are going past it.

During the Apollo 13 mission the moon was around 222,000 miles from Earth. For today's mission the moon is 251,900 miles away from Earth.
 
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Blue Screen of Death said:
It's still hard to think that we've finally sent people moon-bound once again, and intend to keep doing so. I pray we don't get only a few landings and give it all up again for another 50 years.
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We won't unless Dems get control of both the Executive & Legislative branch. Remember Obama and co using NASA as Muslim outreach?
 
This is gonna sound insane and I may just be imagining it, but every time I click in onto livestream, I get that dizzying squeezing effect one would get from air motion-sickness in an airplane. Might be my mind freaking out at a live camera feed of space, still makes me sound a little crazy when I'm not even experiencing it myself.
 
Within 5000 miles of the moon now. They are doing a full day of surveying, and on the stream just talked about how they are cooling the window from inside with a "condensation hose" to improve photo quality taken through the window after it gets breathed on by the astronauts looking through.

They are also repeating a meme they came up with, where they have "full moon joy."
 
Why is there a scheduled "loss of signal" while in the dark side of the moon?
As much as narrating the experience seems to be so important, suddenly it isn't?
I wanna know what they aren't seeing! lol
 
FatalTater said:
Why is there a scheduled "loss of signal" while in the dark side of the moon?
As much as narrating the experience seems to be so important, suddenly it isn't?
I wanna know what they aren't seeing! lol
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Communications depend on line of sight. When they're around the far side of the moon, the moon blocks signals to and from Earth. They'll still be narrating and taking pictures where there's sufficient light. We'll get to listen and see it all later on when it's downloaded to Houston.
 
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Should also add, they won't be "entirely" out of communication. They will still be communicating with the Deep Space Network while on the far side. They will be sending telemetry data to other probes and sattelites out in the solar system just in case something catastrophic happens. But because of the distances involved its impossible to have a real time communication.

nice "Crescent Earth" right now.

1775515099596.png

One of the integrity crew has done a "Christ is King". Praise jesus!
 
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All of this shit has been so impressive. I think that shot of the crescent Earth is really rather humbling regardless of the quality.
 
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