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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
I think the common miscommunication here is that defense is the largest part of the US discretionary budget (about half overall), but that doesn't include those non-negotiable things like Social Security, Medicare, etc .
"Please note: Values displayed are outlays, which is money that is actually paid out by the government. Other sources, such as USAspending, may display spending as obligations, which is money that is promised to be paid, but may not yet be delivered."
The Biden administration's FY2025 defense budget request was $850 billion for the DoD, with the total national security budget reaching over $895 billion. The FY2026 proposal submitted by the Trump admin is 1.5 trillion for DoD.
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.
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.
Gavin Newsom alone wasted (laundered?) billions of dollars in California. The United States can send 10 rockets per day and wouldn't even feel the financial impacts of it. The states individually waste millions per day.
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.
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.
If you are on the near side of the moon[1], you will always see Earth see around Earth as it rotates and as the moon orbits it. You will also see it in different phases, like how we see lunar phases from Earth. If you are on the far side of the moon, you will not see Earth at all as you will always be facing away from it.
[1] The Earth does move in the moon's sky a bit. If you are on the near side but getting close to the far side, the Earth will be below the horizon sometimes.
Consider what it'd mean if there were parts of the Earth that could not be seen from the moon, it would also mean those locations could never themselves see the moon.
Ignoring the orbital period implications, I think it'd be bigger news if either US or Europe, or Asia couldn't ever actually see the moon.
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.
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'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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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].
Are full size/larger images available somewhere? 1920x1280px seems low.
Edit: Found 'em: https://images.nasa.gov/search?page=1&media=image&yearStart=...
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
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
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
And my screensaver folder grows larger...
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.
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
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.
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.
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...
This is the best animation of the trajectory I've seen: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260406.html
Someone did a nice animation on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNQ7MoL7erI
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
> $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
> The US spends almost that much on net debt interest each day
Spends, or accrues?
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.
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.
>Defense LAPS every other budget category.
I suppose it matters how you lump things, but for federal spending:
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...Not all of those are discretionary spending? Maybe not equivalent to include, for example, Social Security.
I think the common miscommunication here is that defense is the largest part of the US discretionary budget (about half overall), but that doesn't include those non-negotiable things like Social Security, Medicare, etc .
"Please note: Values displayed are outlays, which is money that is actually paid out by the government. Other sources, such as USAspending, may display spending as obligations, which is money that is promised to be paid, but may not yet be delivered."
The Biden administration's FY2025 defense budget request was $850 billion for the DoD, with the total national security budget reaching over $895 billion. The FY2026 proposal submitted by the Trump admin is 1.5 trillion for DoD.
> LAPS every other budget category.
Except for social security, health, medicare, debt interest
> $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.
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.
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.
>we can still do hard things
Absolutely! What do you have in mind?
$4B is chump change for the U.S.
Gavin Newsom alone wasted (laundered?) billions of dollars in California. The United States can send 10 rockets per day and wouldn't even feel the financial impacts of it. The states individually waste millions per day.
Ok I realize you're making a point, but 10 launches a day comes out to about $15 trillion a year, that's like half of the US GDP
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.
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...
Yeah, gives me very similar vibes to the famous "pale blue dot."
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?
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.
The moon is tidally locked to earth, we only ever see one side.
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.
Is it 2-way? I guess moon see all around earth, or no?
If you are on the near side of the moon[1], you will always see Earth see around Earth as it rotates and as the moon orbits it. You will also see it in different phases, like how we see lunar phases from Earth. If you are on the far side of the moon, you will not see Earth at all as you will always be facing away from it.
[1] The Earth does move in the moon's sky a bit. If you are on the near side but getting close to the far side, the Earth will be below the horizon sometimes.
Consider what it'd mean if there were parts of the Earth that could not be seen from the moon, it would also mean those locations could never themselves see the moon.
Ignoring the orbital period implications, I think it'd be bigger news if either US or Europe, or Asia couldn't ever actually see the moon.
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.
Yes and its rotation is synchronized to earth. See the animation at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_locking
https://images.nasa.gov/details/art002e009286
Stunning!
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.
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'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!
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.
Wonder how it feels after being out there, seeing that, then coming back like alright back in the system I go.
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.
You might like this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect
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.
Just wanted to say how moving I find these pictures. Proof of what humanity is capable of :)
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.
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.
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?
A chain of meteors would strike the surface in a line as the moon moves
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.
Really cool! Artemis III will be even more breathtaking I think https://www.nasa.gov/mission/artemis-iii/
I hope they listened to Dark Side of the Moon on the flyby.
We're so not accustomed to moon pictures taken with "normal" cameras. These almost look like 3D renders to me, it's incredible
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...
The solar eclipse pictures are absolutely beautiful.
These things are so damn cool!