Tag: NASA
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Earthset and eclipse, oh my! NASA releases magnificent images from Artemis mission’s moon flyby
A crescent Earth sinks behind the moon’s disk in a wide-angle version of the Artemis 2 crew’s “Earthset” picture. (NASA Photo) A day after the Artemis 2 mission’s historic lunar flyby, NASA has released a stunning set of high-resolution images documenting Earthset and Earthrise, a solar eclipse that set the moon aglow, and other views…
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Astronauts set distance record, revealing the Moon as a place to be explored
After staring at the Moon for almost eight hours Monday, the commander of NASA’s Artemis II mission finally ran out of ways to describe what he was seeing. “No matter how long we look at this, our brains are not processing this image in front of us. It is absolutely spectacular, surreal,” said Reid Wiseman,…
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‘Moon joy!’ Artemis 2’s crew sets a distance record, documents lunar far side and heads back toward Earth
NASA’s Artemis 2 crew captured an iconic “Earthset” picture, showing Earth dipping beneath the lunar horizon. (NASA Photo) Four astronauts today became the first humans to make a trip around the moon since the Apollo era — and added new pages to history books for the Artemis era. The Artemis 2 crew reached a maximum distance of…
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As Artemis II zooms to the Moon, everything seems to be going swimmingly
As the Artemis II lunar mission moved into its third day on Friday, and with the spacecraft’s big engine firing behind it, the four astronauts on board had a little more downtime. So the four crew members—Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen—had their first opportunities to speak with their families at length…
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Trump Proposes 23% NASA Budget Cut During Artemis Moon Mission
Will Trump’s 23% NASA Budget Cut Kill the Artemis Program? President Trump released a fiscal year 2027 budget blueprint calling for a 23% cut to NASA’s $24 billion budget—a $5.5 billion reduction—just two days after the agency launched four astronauts on humanity’s first crewed lunar mission in over 50 years. The timing underscores the political…
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Why is NASA bothering to go back to the Moon if we’ve already been there?
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.—The first time NASA launched humans toward the Moon, in December 1968, the United States was a deeply fractured nation. The historic flight of three people into the unknown brought a measure of solace to a country riven by assassinations, riots, political discord, and a deeply unpopular foreign war. If history does…
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‘Let’s go!’ NASA launches humanity’s first moon voyage in nearly 54 years
NASA’s Space Launch System rises from its Florida launch pad, sending the Artemis 2 crew into orbit. (NASA via YouTube) After years of postponements and close to $100 billion in spending, NASA has launched the first mission to send astronauts around the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. The 10-day Artemis 2 mission began today…
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This is my third Orion launch, but it feels totally different
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.—This will be the third time I have observed NASA’s Orion spacecraft take flight. But with this one, for the first time, am I genuinely hopeful about the future of the space agency and its plans to build a station on the surface of the Moon. The two previous flights, in 2014…
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Artemis II returns humanity to the Moon with launch on Wednesday evening
At 23:35 UTC on Dec. 16, 1972, the Apollo 17 command module, America, successfully completed its trans-Earth injection burn, sending it and its crew of NASA astronauts Gene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt, and Ronald Evans on a return trajectory back to Earth. The moment marked the final time a crewed Apollo spacecraft was in orbit around…
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Milestone moon mission is getting a push from Pacific Northwest tech
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Brent Urke, program manager for L3Harris’ facility in Redmond, Wash., check out a model of the Orion spaceship that’s due to take four astronauts around the moon as early as this week. Cantwell is pointing to the model’s set of eight R-4D thrusters. An actual R-4D thruster, manufactured in Redmond,…