Lunar Flyby

https://www.nasa.gov/gallery/lunar-flyby/

by kipi • 4 months ago

964 240 4 months ago

ranger207• 4 months ago

I have to admit, I've been an Artemis hater ($4 billion per launch lol) but the experience of watching people go back around the Moon has been incredibly inspiring, and it proves to me that maybe we can still do hard things

jameslk• 4 months ago

$4 billion per launch lol

The US spends almost that much on net debt interest each day (~$3 billion/day[0]). Not that adding to the debt helps at all, but the old proverb about being penny wise and pound foolish seems relevant

0. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61951

ToucanLoucan• 4 months ago

Also we spend that much every 4 days we're in Iran, and that's only ONE of our neo-colonialist irons in the fire, as it were.

If you want to make the US financially solvent, cut defense. Defense LAPS every other budget category. Whether you want to take the conservative position on why that is (our allies freeload on our defense spending) or the Progressive one (the U.S. is an empire in decline and every major empire through history has spent vast sums to maintain itself why would the U.S. be different) doesn't change the fact that our military budgets exceed over a dozen other nations' combined, the vast majority of whom are allies.

icegreentea23• 4 months ago

The absolute cost isn't the problem, it's the value that we're getting from it. SLS and Artemis are both incredibly expensive and ramshackle programs, and regardless of how bad the rest of the USG might be in terms of their cost, or value, if you are a true space fan and a true American space fan, you should want this little corner of humanity to hold itself to a higher standard.

Acceptance of over costing and under delivering is exactly why the US is stuck with SpaceX as its prime space launch provider. It's only through the miracle of the vanity of billionaires that there's even a realistic second choice (Blue Origin) that might develop.

It's also this type of attitude that let's us be in a situation where we honestly don't know how well the heat shield will work on reentry (SLS launches are so expensive, and so slow to build and prep to launch, that we cannot fit in a uncrewed mission between 1 and 2 to test or validate fixes or models).

If Artemis as a program succeeds, it will be despite the incredible graft, pork, and ass covering, not because of it. I want Artemis to succeed because the achievement will be beautiful and amazing, and I want everyone to be safe and sound. I want Artemis to fail, to force a reckoning. I still believe that America has great things to offer to the world, but it's not going to be able to do that by muddling it's way through and cobbling together random pork filled programs into a vaguely inspiring shape.

monkpit• 4 months ago

The US spends almost that much on net debt interest each day

Spends, or accrues?

pavon2• 4 months ago

We spend more on debt interest than we spend on the military or anything really other than social security. That isn't a useful comparison anymore.

sublinear• 4 months ago

The longer term value of having moon outposts for observation, mining, etc. will pay off massively.

This is way bigger than just putting people on the moon or hubris. It's the prerequisite for everything we've also said about Mars. Elon just muddied the waters so much that people are so negative about anything else.

chrismcb• 4 months ago

Ignoring the fact that we aren't using money for rocket fuel (that is people are benefitting from us spending that money) the potential upside is immense. There are a time of resources available in the asteroids and a moon base makes mining those resources easier and cheaper.

moralestapia• 4 months ago

we can still do hard things

Absolutely! What do you have in mind?

delta_p_delta_x• 4 months ago

$4 billion per launch

This is not a lot of money on a nation-state scale. It's equal to giving every person in the US about US$12.

dogemaster2026• 4 months ago

Newsom, Mamdani, please stay away.

dbvn• 4 months ago

*taking* $12 from every person in the US... But I still think it's worth it.

lostlogin• 4 months ago

$4 billion per launch

If Trump gets his $1.5T military budget, that would be about the military spend per day I think?

jaspa992• 4 months ago

And 9 hours of entitlement spend

themafia• 4 months ago

$4 billion per launch lol

$1.3 billion for the mission hardware.

$2.2 billion for the single use SLS.

$0.5 billion for the launch pad.

watching people go back around the Moon

Two of the missions were actually meant to land. One of them still may.

jaspa992• 4 months ago

Those $4 billion per launch are about 9 hours of entitlement spending (social security & health programs).

shimman2• 4 months ago

Why is entitlement spending bad? Do you think the government should only give welfare to corporations and not people?

ge962• 4 months ago

Wonder how it feels after being out there, seeing that, then coming back like alright back in the system I go.

steve_adams_86• 4 months ago

I imagine it depends a lot on your outlook. Someone could see the system as the thing that made the experience possible in the first place, and feel a lot of gratitude and a sense of possibility as a result.

typeofhuman2• 4 months ago

You might like this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect

sph2• 4 months ago

I can experience it just by watching these pictures, I cannot imagine how intense it must be for astronauts.

_august• 4 months ago

Are full size/larger images available somewhere? 1920x1280px seems low.

Edit: Found 'em: https://images.nasa.gov/search?page=1&media=image&yearStart=...

dylan60416• 4 months ago

The external shots seem to just be from the GoPro strapped to a solar panel. Didn't seen anything that looked like the shots from the Nikons onboard. Was hoping for a couple, but I know I'm just being greedy wanting all the pics

edit: exif data shows some are from a Nikon. I just want to see them all!!! My greedy line still plays

tharkun__• 4 months ago

Hah! Funny how everyone here seems to be thinking the same: They said something about "finally 4k moon rocket images" and the stuff we got in the news was like blurry 800x600 type with lots of JPEG artifacts and such.

Even the smallest resolution images I see in the link that the parent edited into their comment have better quality than what news outlets posted.

I want TIFFs that takes ages to download and I need to scroll around in/zoom out on!

niek_pas• 4 months ago

Maybe you’re being impatient, but I don’t think you’re being greedy. This is a publicly funded project. I’d say those photos belong in the public domain. Which they are.

aanet3• 4 months ago

I was hoping that they used a medium format camera like Hasselblad or something for the larger pics... but no such luck. I guess weight might have been one factor.

Still, the pics are mind blowing. Out of this world, tbh

dylan60416• 4 months ago

A 20.8 megapixel 5568 x 3712 pixels is not a shitty image. When we get to see those images, they will be much better than the GoPro images we're seeing

RogerL• 4 months ago

it was light gathering. the D5 they brought is a very old camera tech wise, but it was ideal for the low light photos of the eclipse. they also brought a Z9 for much higher resolution photos.

spartanatreyu• 4 months ago

And my screensaver folder grows larger...

cbhl• 4 months ago

To be fair they "only" have a 20 Mbps laser uplink from the capsule to Earth, and that's shared between all the systems and uploading images/video.

hyperbovine• 4 months ago

260Mbps? https://www.nasa.gov/goddard/esc/o2o/

_moof6• 4 months ago

"Uplink" means Earth to spacecraft. Spacecraft to Earth is downlink.

ChrisMarshallNY3• 4 months ago

Try this: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore/

I don’t see TIFFs, so I assume the originals were JPEG.

cguess• 4 months ago

If anything the originals would be RAW files.

farmerbb• 4 months ago

It looks like changing the `~large` in the image filename to `~orig` gets you the full size versions.

modeless2• 4 months ago

Thanks, these make some kickass ultrawide wallpapers.

gasi2• 4 months ago

You can view them in full resolution here: https://zoomhub.net/showcase/photography/nasa

foobarbecue• 4 months ago

Should eventually be on pds atlas I hope. https://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/

beaconfield• 4 months ago

thank you

drfloyd51• 4 months ago

The solar eclipse pictures are absolutely beautiful.

sph2• 4 months ago

I shared some of these pictures with family members that hadn’t even heard of Artemis, and one asked if the blue thing was Mars. I am shook.

ramesh31• 4 months ago

There needs to be a word for that feeling of dread you get when reminded of just how feeble and weak the average human mind is, and how tenuous of a grasp on reality most people have.

sho_hn• 4 months ago

Maybe I'm an eternal optimist, but sounds to me like they actually tried to put themselves into space, made the assumption that anything visible past the moon must be further out and were left with "wait, I thought it was supposed to be red?"

Uninformed, but not ignorant and perhaps even interested. I hope your response started with "No, actually, even cooler: ..." and you made a space fan that day.

i_love_retros• 3 months ago

Have you talked to most people about space? Absolute disinterest. You're optimism is wasted I'm afraid.

dboreham• 4 months ago

I'd be genuinely curious to see a list of the things they had heard of, since Artemis has been in the news constantly for a month. E.g. have they just not heard of anything (consume no news), or are they in some news silo that excludes rockets, and if so what other things does it include? We may be missing something important that we've never heard of!

dylan60416• 4 months ago

It just goes to show how normal space flight is compared to the Apollo era. All the way up to Apollo 11, people stopped what they were doing to watch. Apollo 13 grabbed some attention with the near disaster. The first Shuttle missions were watched, but people quickly lost interest. Even this going back to the moon was nothing new to the average person. When people claim it was all over the news seems like someone in an echo chamber. It might have been in your news feeds, but I doubt it was as predominate as you might think. If your "news" feed is nothing but influencers and celebrities, then NASA probably never even interrupts their feeds

cruffle_duffle2• 4 months ago

These things are so damn cool!

jflessau• 4 months ago

Just wanted to say how moving I find these pictures. Proof of what humanity is capable of :)

suzzer993• 4 months ago

I hope they listened to Dark Side of the Moon on the flyby.

arduanika• 4 months ago

Matter of fact, it's all dark.

ahazred8ta• 4 months ago

It can be any colour you like.

mememememememo2• 4 months ago

Luckily the far side of the moon wasn't the dark side of the moon on this trip.

NooneAtAll33• 4 months ago

it mostly was, it looks like

it's full moon

Almondsetat• 4 months ago

We're so not accustomed to moon pictures taken with "normal" cameras. These almost look like 3D renders to me, it's incredible

dylan60416• 4 months ago

Why is normal in quotes? Do you mean visible light vs filtered monochrome with false-color outputs or infrared/radio/x-ray like some other telescopes use? Would that be the abnormal you are referring? The Apollo images were taken with Hasselblad film cameras that were "normal" cameras[0].

[0]https://www.hasselblad.com/about/history/hasselblad-in-space...

oliyoung• 4 months ago

I think they mean "consumer" or "off the shelf" as opposed to "custom build for the mission", we've seen iPhone and GoPro photos

mememememememo2• 4 months ago

A camera you can order on Amazon in the next 5 minutes

madrox2• 4 months ago

There is something uncanny about the bandwidth and quality of all the artifacts coming from this mission.

I've subsisted on photos from the Apollo missions and artistic renditions for so long that seeing the modern, high resolution real thing to be quite stirring in a way I didn't expect. It actually does make me believe that the future could be quite cool.

poszlem• 4 months ago

Yeah, I think we got so accustomed to that analog look that seeing them like this feels almost like viewing a World War I photo in full color and 4K.

dylan60416• 4 months ago

We haven't even seen the full quality images yet. They've commented that the live feed from the GoPro is a limited bandwidth because they have to share the bandwidth with running the capsule. The images from the Nikons onboard are just scaled down. My initial guess was from an export specifically to get an early dump to get everyone on the ground chomping at the bit something to see. They'll get the full images when the SD cards splash down. When those are released, I'm expecting quite a few OMG images

madrox2• 4 months ago

That’s really exciting!

zamadatix2• 4 months ago

I wouldn't mind some raw files but I honestly don't think they'll be too strikingly different than these (make sure you're looking at the full 20 MP images which should be several MB, not the 2 MP previews at ~200 KB).

kube-system• 4 months ago

I cannot wait until we get 4k video of people walking on the surface, kicking up dust.

Gagarin19172• 4 months ago

The existing 16mm film from Apollo is roughly equivalent to 2K, and you can see dust kicked up pretty nicely!

aksss• 4 months ago

Space monkeys, moon pirates, and a Starbucks in the moon mall.

JumpCrisscross4• 4 months ago

something uncanny about the bandwidth and quality of all the artifacts coming from this mission

Back in 2019, Robert Zubrin suggested using rovers "to do detailed photography of the [Moon] base area and its surroundings" to "ultimately form the basis of a virtual reality experience that will allow millions of members of the public to participate vicariously in the missions" [1].

[1] https://spacenews.com/op-ed-lunar-gateway-or-moon-direct/

selfmodruntime3• 4 months ago

I agree 100%. Seeing the picture of the backside of the moon with the earth in view really drove home that the moon really is just a large rock.

JumpCrisscross4• 4 months ago

the moon really is just a large rock

It really is surprising being able to see the Moon isn't spherical. (Are those abberations?) It makes sene, given the moon isn't in hydrostatic equilibrium.

bregma2• 4 months ago

backside of the moon

I think perhaps you mean the far side of the moon. The "backside" of the moon implies a large graben stretching almost from pole to pole, and I have seen no evidence of such a geological formation in any photos.

TripleTree• 4 months ago

What? The Apollo photos were with extremely high quality cameras on film. They're incredibly high resolution.

LorenDB• 4 months ago

I think my favorite of all these images is https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/amf-art002e009287/. The sheer size difference, while simply a trick of perspective, makes Earth feel tiny and insignificant.

andrewstuart2• 4 months ago

Yeah, gives me very similar vibes to the famous "pale blue dot."

aanet3• 4 months ago

Some of my favs:

1. The moon eclipsed, with the Orion capsule (outside POV, from GoPro) - https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/art002e009567/art002e00...

2. The moon eclipsed, with the Orion capsule, and Earth crescent (outside POV, from GoPro) - https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/art002e009567/art002e00...

3. Crescent Moon, Crescent Earth (my fav!!) "A New View of the Moon" - https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/art002e009287/art002e00...

4. Artemis II in Eclipse (new fav!) - https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/art002e009301/art002e00...

Deebster2• 4 months ago

I think your first link should be to https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/art002e009566/art002e00...

asimovDev4• 4 months ago

If you stare at the picture, there's an illusion of the shadow growing and enveloping the moon further. At least for me. Quite neat. Might be something about the eyes focusing on the dark part of the photo?

cdelsolar• 4 months ago

My favorite too.. one of the most awe-inspiring pictures I've ever seen.

dylan60416• 4 months ago

I listened to pretty much the entire fly by yesterday, and I was imagining how I would have spent my time at the windows with a camera. Listening to the comms made me think of that episode from From The Earth to the Moon where they take the astronauts out and give them geology lessons so they could be more productive with their descriptions.

I was also very curious of their descriptions during the eclipse where the Earth shine was lighting up the dark side of the moon to such a surreal look they couldn't really describe it. They were even commenting that they didn't feel the photos being taken were doing it justice either.

I also was wondering if they will make any modifications to the capsule since covering a window to block the Earth shine caused concern on the ground from some of the readings they were getting. Assuming it was overheating as they redirected air flow to the window. Then again, the following missions won't be so concerned with a single fly by so probably not something they'll address.

jrmg• 4 months ago

It was amazing listening to it in real time.

If I had any doubt about crewed missions, this Artemis moon flyby is extinguishing them.

Hearing the crew discussing observations with Mission Control, moving cameras around, describing what they see, reacting to events and to curiosity and changing what they’re doing accordingly. And obviously just SO EXCITED to be doing it all. It was just amazing.

They’re still live streaming. It’s not as exciting anymore - ‘just’ on the way home now - but you can just put it on in the background and experience a tiny bit of what it’s like to be in the capsule. They’re exercising right now.

https://www.youtube.com/live/m3kR2KK8TEs

spike0212• 4 months ago

I've been trying to keep the 24 hour stream on in the background as often as possible. Some of it is silly but it just feels exciting to be able to partake in the experience remotely like this.

hydrogen7800• 4 months ago

that episode from From The Earth to the Moon where they take the astronauts out and give them geology lessons so they could be more productive with their descriptions.

My favorite episode of the series and I was thinking of it during Integrity's flyby.

wishfish2• 4 months ago

Zoomed into several of the lunar surface photos and noticed some of the very small impact craters are in a regularly spaced straight line.

Looks to me as if a meteorite came in at a shallow angle and basically skipped across the surface. Leaving dimpled craters as it bounced. Looks very similar to rocks skipping on a pond. Am I correct or is there another explanation for these?

xnx• 4 months ago

A chain of meteors would strike the surface in a line as the moon moves

ninkendo• 4 months ago

A single “rubble pile” asteroid will easily break apart when nearing a celestial body, once it crosses the Roche limit. It will break apart into a perfectly straight line too (at least the impact craters will.) I would guess most of the straight-line series of craters are all caused by something like this.

maccam912• 4 months ago

If I am understanding correctly you are seeing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crater_chain which are craters caused by debris blasted out when another crater is formed.

wishfish2• 4 months ago

Thank you! Glad to see there's a Wikipedia article about it. And good to learn the formal name for this formation: "catena" (plural "catenae").

balajeekalyan• 4 months ago

Really cool! Artemis III will be even more breathtaking I think https://www.nasa.gov/mission/artemis-iii/

joemi• 4 months ago

I started rewatching For All Mankind a week or so before the Artemis II launch, so it's been pretty wild to watch an alt-history about people going to and settling on the Moon and Mars, and then to see real life people just starting to return to the Moon at the same time.

PedroBatista• 4 months ago

Very cool pictures, especially those ones backlit by the Sun are something new. ie real photos that we usually only see in sci-fi games or movies.

But the real question is: Who of those 4 clogged up the toilet? That's what the public demands to know.

aosaigh• 4 months ago

I cannot fathom what it must be like to witness this in-person. The pictures are spectacular but to spend time experiencing it outside the window in your proximity must be overwhelming in the most incredible way.

SegfaultSeagull• 4 months ago

Can someone ELI5 how it is one side of the moon is never seen on Earth? The moon orbits and also rotates, does it not?

written-beyond• 4 months ago

The moon is tidally locked to earth, we only ever see one side.

kshacker2• 4 months ago

Is it 2-way? I guess moon see all around earth, or no?

Georgelemental• 4 months ago

To add: this happens because the parts of the Moon that are closer to the Earth are pulled in more by Earth's gravity, compared to the ones further away.

willis9363• 4 months ago

The gravitational pull of the moon lifts up the ocean to cause tides. Well the Earth's gravitational pull is so strong on the moon that the heavier side of the moon always faces the Earth. This is called tidal locking. So the only way to ever see the far side of the moon is to go there. Humans have gone there before, but almost always during an Earth "full moon", which means the far side is unlit. We do have full images of the far side of the moon from remote probes, but the 21% of the far side that was lit had human eyes on it for the first time ever.

grishka• 4 months ago

But why does this not happen to planets themselves in relation to the sun?

SilverElfin• 4 months ago

Yes and its rotation is synchronized to earth. See the animation at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_locking

nirav722• 4 months ago

thanks, that's probably the best animation I've seen explaining a tidal locked moon.

ijidak• 4 months ago

I believe it's caused by even the slightest imbalance in mass. Because the moon is so close to Earth, the imbalance causes gravity to be slightly stronger on one side than the other side. Eventually, that leads to no rotation at all.

I imagine most bodies rotating around a second object will eventually lose their angular velocity.

NooneAtAll33• 4 months ago

The moon orbits and also rotates, does it not?

and one cancels the other, yes

_moof6• 4 months ago

It's because Earth pulls on the bulge in the Moon created by Earth's gravity.

It has to do with the tides. Except in this case it isn't ocean tides - it's lunar tides. Just as the Moon's gravity creates a bulge in Earth's oceans, Earth's gravity creates a bulge in the material that makes up the moon.

If Earth and the Moon didn't rotate, the bulges would "point" directly at the other body. But with rotation, the tidal bulge is a little bit offset in the direction of rotation. And the Moon used to rotate.

That offset creates a torque. Earth's gravity tries to pull the bulge into perfect alignment. Over time this slows the rotation of the moon until it stopped rotating at all.

(Technically the Moon does rotate, but it does so at the same rate that it orbits Earth. So it doesn't rotate from our perspective.)

theodorethomas• 4 months ago

One consequence of that is that the Earth, as seen from the nearside of the Moon's surface, just hangs there, never moving, apart from a small wobble.

irickt• 4 months ago

This is the best animation of the trajectory I've seen: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260406.html

pkaye• 4 months ago

Someone did a nice animation on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNQ7MoL7erI

sandos• 4 months ago

I really liked this video! Orbits are hard to visualize but I think the choices here were very good.

geokon• 4 months ago

It's interesting that the flights are not timed for when the moon is in the magnetosphere shadow. As far as I could gather it seems they're intentionally exposing astronauts to more radiation to test equipment (maybe with an eye to future Mars missions?). Hard to get hard details from all the press release fluffy

https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/news/noaas-space-weather-mission...

matheusmoreira• 4 months ago

https://images.nasa.gov/details/art002e009286

Stunning!

cogogo3• 4 months ago

Are the bright spots to the lower right in this photo galaxies or just camera artifacts[0]? Unreal photo either way.

[0]https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/art002e009301/art002e00...

dylan60416• 4 months ago

They said they were able to see a few planets during the eclipse. I know they definitely saw Mars as they were discussing the red color. They saw Venus which was visible in the live feed from the GoPro on the solar panel. IIRC, they were thinking Saturn would have been visible. My guess is the really bright dots are planets. It looks like some horrendous compression artifacts along with some possible lens distortion. My exif app says no exif data in the jpg you linked. Did you come to that image from their website that provides the EXIF to see what lens it was? Nothing looks like a galaxy in the image to me.

Edit: After further looking and some zooming into it, I'd say the bright dot closest to the moon is Venus, the next one has a red tint making it Mars, and then the last one would be Saturn with the rings. There might be a couple of galaxies in the upper left corner. I was quick to dismiss and blame on compression. The benefits of not having to shoot through atmosphere. I wouldn't have expected that detail in what I'm assuming to be a fairly fast exposure

cogogo3• 4 months ago

Appreciate the detailed response. I think it would be a borderline miraculous photo if they are planets aligned in that way. Zooming they look more like artifacts or galaxies to me. I spend a good amount of time looking at planets from earth through binoculars and even with an atmosphere they resolve better than that.

Deebster2• 4 months ago

There is EXIF available in the original version: https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/art002e009301/art002e00...

It's taken with an AF Nikkor 35mm f/2D on a NIKON Z 9.

nfg• 4 months ago

From left to right: Saturn, Mars and Mercury.

neverkn0wsb357• 4 months ago

I wish they would’ve flown by and taken a picture of the Apollo 11 lunar landing site.

I think it would’ve been a super cool throwback to the history of lunar exploration; maybe it’s just me but I think it would’ve been really exciting. It would basically be the like visiting a UNESCO (moon?) heritage site.

CookieTonsure• 4 months ago

The main point of the voyage was to see the far side, and also to report on previously-unseen portions of the Moon that hadn't really had human coverage in the past.

Since all the Apollo landings were on the near-side of the Moon, they were in fact less accessible to this crew.

My disappointment lay chiefly in their L.O.S. periods, because in 2026 why does Earth lack operational satellites that could relay comms from the other side? Or a space optical/radio telescope that would benefit massively from the darkness and shielding of a Moon-sized body? No humans necessary for that. Of course, you couldn't power such a craft with solar power...

dylan60416• 4 months ago

because in 2026 why does Earth lack operational satellites that could relay comms from the other side?

The moon is not an easy body to orbit. Keeping something in orbit around the moon requires a lot of station keeping which requires a lot of fuel. Once that fuel runs out, the orbit will not be stable. People have talked about trying an Earth-Moon L2 point, but that's not as stable as Sun-Earth L2 where things like JWST are located.

_moof6• 4 months ago

Mostly because there's been very little US activity on the Moon to justify it. Orbiting the Moon can also be a pain - its gravitational field is "lumpy" - but you can manage that by making your orbit bigger (higher). See this paper if you're interested in details as they pertain to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been flying since 2009: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20070035736/downloads/20...

China has a lunar comm relay IIRC, to support some surface operations on the far side.

rootusrootus• 4 months ago

They would have needed a hell of a lot more camera for that, right? Even the best DSLR with the best lens is going to have a lot of trouble resolving something that small at over 4000 miles.

dylan60416• 4 months ago

That's a detail a lot of people miss. Apollo missions orbited at ~150 miles above the moon while Artemis II fly-by was much further away. That was by design to specifically give them the wider view to see things missed by Apollo's closer orbits

ggm• 4 months ago

odd they don't do a carousel. I get that it's not necessary and minimalism has a joy of it's own, but click-through would be useful.

ashton314• 4 months ago

Amaze, amaze, amaze!

Loved the Project Hail Mary quote from one of the mission controllers. :)

This bright spot in world news has been good for my mental health and general motivation. Thank you NASA!

cmos• 4 months ago

What a trip. They must all be so excited!

I hope they will come back as ambassadors of peace.

gasi2• 4 months ago

I built a zoomable collection viewer for all NASA Artemis II + Apollo 8 gallery images at their full original resolutions—nearly 2 gigapixels across 104 images. Spanning 1968 Earthrise to 2026 Earthset:

https://zoomhub.net/showcase/photography/nasa

Try different layouts with L (grid, masonry, spiral, etc.), filter by gallery or camera, WASD/Q/E/Tab to navigate.

pomian• 3 months ago

Very cool! Nice work.

NooneAtAll33• 4 months ago

I've been thoroughly disappointed in NASA's handling of "public relations" part of the mission

every significant achievement point became a publicity stunt of lowest quality, with forced line reads and little practicality

I'm eagerly awaiting future engineering challenges and science results - but I'd want NASA to concentrate on that first, and farce show-making second

dylan60416• 4 months ago

At one point, they were telling NASA that they didn't have the right words or enough superlatives. I kept waiting for them to quote Contact with "should have sent a poet"

boguscoder• 4 months ago

There’s something off about gps coordinates in EXIF data

kooshball• 4 months ago

which photo has gps in the EXIF?

nsim• 4 months ago

What is the licence on these images? I can't seen anything on the site or in the HTML.

I've been waiting for a new Earth Rise/Set shot (which is thankfully at least 5568x3712px from a NIKON D5).

Edit: https://www.nasa.gov/nasa-brand-center/images-and-media/

You may use this material for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits, computer graphical simulations and Internet Web pages.

modeless2• 4 months ago

Works of the US government are not copyrighted.

habinero• 4 months ago

There is none, they're automatically public domain.

_moof6• 4 months ago

Mostly true. There are some restrictions on images containing NASA logos or NASA employees, for example. https://www.nasa.gov/nasa-brand-center/images-and-media/

mathgeek2• 4 months ago

Only the ones not containing the NASA logo or the astronauts are public domain.

html5cat3• 4 months ago

It's a bit tricky to navigate between all the amazing photos NASA Artemis crew captured so I vibe coded (Codex) a simple site with full screen full res view and arrow navigation:

https://nasa.puma.tech

feedback welcome

suzzer993• 4 months ago

That's awesome. Since you asked for feedback, can you vibecode up a thumbnail view? Also I see a bunch more images on the NASA site. How are you pulling them?

html5cat3• 4 months ago

yeah, this was a one time sync. which source do you prefer for full list? and for thumbnail view, would you like a T shortcut or any other button?

html5cat3• 3 months ago

spike0212• 4 months ago

this is really helpful. such beautiful photos.

asimovDev4• 4 months ago

Gorgeous, awe-inspiring photos.

Tangentially, did the NASA website move to WordPress? I thought it was Drupal, the Drupal official website even had a case study about nasa.gov. I see wp-content links on the site and there is no Drupal behaviors in JavaScript and I didn't notice any of the usual drupal classes in the source

sha-3• 4 months ago

NASA migrated thousands(!) of their sites to WordPress back in 2023. I think it had to do with user-friendliness of the Gutenberg editor.

asimovDev4• 3 months ago

thanks for clearing this up. a bit sad as someone who started out as a Drupal dev. It was hellish as a junior but the overall ecosystem is so expandable and the community is great. At least the Tesla website is still Drupal heh

sachahjkl• 4 months ago

what about a video ?

hulitu• 4 months ago

Lunar Flyby

I though they were going _to the moon_, not "flyby".

NASA is a pale reminiscent of its former self. Sad.

_moof6• 4 months ago

This is a new vehicle, and this is a test flight to work out the kinks before attempting a landing. It's exactly the same way Apollo was done. Go read about Apollo 8.

voidUpdate3• 4 months ago

They're "going to the moon" in the same way that going to the drive-through is "going to mcdonalds". I think NASA is still as good as it was, they just don't have unlimited "beat the soviets" budget anymore

shafyy• 4 months ago

God, they must have hated being forced to speak to the president

voidUpdate3• 4 months ago

Some of these photos look so "fake". Maybe because of how they are lit or the lack of atmospheric distortion, they don't quite looks real (I'm not disputing that they are authentic, they just look a bit weird)

tokai• 4 months ago

Its a classic feeling when seeing things there one not normally see. There's a whole conspiracy that the war in Ukraine is fake, because video of combat looks weird compared to movies and video games.

pavon2• 4 months ago

Yeah, it is common for pictures in space to look like simplistic raytraced renderings because the lighting and shadows are so sharp, lacking atmospheric diffusion and scattering.

juleiie• 4 months ago

I am really worried about their return entry. I got emotionally invested in the crew, meanwhile there have been voices saying Orion’s heat shield is made of garbagium and tested with undergrad level simplistic physics models.

Then I read about the NASA administrator being some sort of “charisma” bravado guy and the government pressures to get to the moon during Trump presidency.

How NASA safety standards are somehow 1/10 of the ones they impose on external private companies who would never be allowed to do crew launch with that kind of level of risk.

I think I am just going to forget about it for now until I hear about hopefully safe return in mainstream news so I don’t end up with heart attack. They really should take mainly single people without families on these missions imo.

LLLDP• 4 months ago

Surpassing Apollo 13’s distance record after so many decades is kind of wild. It really shows how infrequent deep-space human missions have been, despite all the progress in other areas.

zkmon2• 4 months ago

Was there any writeup on the actual goals and accomplishments of this mission. I'm sure there is some very valuable scientif8c data and observations done, but what exactly are those (other than 'wow' media)?

spanjer• 4 months ago

Getting the public excited also has its place. Also sending humans so far from earth has enough challenges to make it worthwile. Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_II) has the experiments listed.

zkmon2• 4 months ago

sending humans so far ...

I see that they travelled 1.6% more distance compared to a tech that was used 56 years ago. If NASA is really excited about this, I think they are having a low news day. I'm sure they must be other goals.

pknerd• 4 months ago

From Google AI Review:

No, the Artemis II mission will not land on the moon. It is a 10-day crewed, deep-space flyby test flight designed to verify spacecraft systems before future landing missions. The crew will circle the moon before returning to Earth, serving as a critical step toward landing later in the decade.

Don't get mad at me. My question is, why did we have to send this mission? This is not the first time we are going to land on the moon, so why this prerequisite?

assimpleaspossi• 4 months ago

To come up to speed and see what still works and what doesn't. To try out the new stuff.

tw1984• 4 months ago

honest question - why any talented people would still work for NASA when real projects are from companies like spacex?

infinity_logesh• 4 months ago

Amazing ! looks cool!

sethammons• 4 months ago

that's no moon.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore/55194334756/

This is an amazing image.

dcchambers• 4 months ago

The eclipse photos are absolutely jaw-dropping.

soci• 4 months ago

We already have images from the far side of the moon since the 2009's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter [1].

In theory, LRO is currently flying at lower orbit than Artemis I mission [2]. Shouldn't the LRO images be better? Maybe NASA has not disclosed all images?

Honest question: why the hype with these pictures?

[1] https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4109

[2] Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) -> ~50 km vs. Artemis I -> ~129 km

syncsynchalt• 4 months ago

It's the difference between buying a postcard of a place you've never been and having a photo you took as a memento.

nom• 4 months ago

i choose to believe it is done solely to annoy the flat earthers

pierrec• 4 months ago

They are not shy about publishing LRO data. It looks like this (one for each LRO camera, narrow angle then wide angle):

https://data.lroc.im-ldi.com/lroc/view_lroc/LRO-L-LROC-2-EDR...

Feel free to assemble these into nice composites or 3D renders.

m3kw9• 4 months ago

This is the best shot, as it is shown with the perspective of a person inside the space ship. All the other ones are just high res versions of the Moon pics we've all seen before.

https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/amf-art002e012279/

nirav722• 4 months ago

That one pic with Solar eclipse is amazing. Especially with the visible stars in the background. it's rare to see a pic from a man missioned with stars being visible in the background.

HALtheWise• 4 months ago

Tangentially related, but there's a bunch of extremely high-resolution panorama images from the Apollo landings available at this site, for anyone who enjoys this sort of thing. https://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollopanoramas/

liuruyan• 3 months ago

好清晰呀，真的很期待再次登录月球，不得不说NASA很强

Lunar Flyby

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