Orion reaches the Moon, buzzes surface, gets ready to orbit

NASA's Orion spacecraft has arrived at the Moon, and even swung around the dark side, as it prepares to settle into an orbit around Earth's biggest satellite that will take it further from home than any (eventually) manned spacecraft before it.  Orion used its orbital maneuvering engine for two and a half minutes to accelerate …

[TVU]

Fun Fact: With the explosive demise of the Soviet N1 Moon rocket, there was no chance that the Soviets could land on the Moon and beat the Americans to it. However, Alexei Leonov and the other cosmonauts realised that they could beat Apollo 8 to the Moon when it came to a figure of 8 lunar orbit and return mission by using a Zond capsule atop a Proton launcher. They lobbied hard for this option but they were overruled by the authorities concerned on the grounds of safety. That is one of history's "What ifs".

They did get a consolation prize in the form of the successful Luna 16 sample and return robotic probe mission that landed on the Moon and brought back 100g or so of lunar regolith.

[PerlyKing]

Interesting. I shudder to think what would be made the Soviets cancel a mission on safety grounds!

All of those astronauts and cosmonauts definitely had balls of steel!

[Winkypop]

It’s 2022

I remember 1969 very well.

Apollo really was outstanding for its time and technology.

Up with this kind of thing!

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: It’s 2022

If this mission is a success do you think that one day people might be able to reach the moon ?

[Richard Boyce]

"Dark" side of the moon

I'm of an age where I remember Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, so I can't resist the bait....

"There is no dark side in the moon, really. Matter of fact, it's all dark. [The only thing that makes it look light is the sun]."

I assume the author means "far" side. He may have a bet on how quickly someone posts this...

[Sceptic Tank]

Re: "Dark" side of the moon

There's definitely a dark side.

[saif]

Re: "Dark" side of the moon

How many sides? Just 2: inside and outside. Outside is lit just under half the time, the inside is always a dark side, as far as I can tell.

[that one in the corner]

Re: "Dark" side of the moon

You clearly didn't watch the recent documentary film, "Moonfall": there is an entire white dwarf inside!

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: "Dark" side of the moon

I recently had to explain to one of my new-age friends that a crescent moon has exactly the same mass as a full moon (he was convinced that the bits of the moon that he couldn't see were no longer there and it was the 'Cosmos' diminishing and renewing the moon..)

Apparently astrology was his skill-set, not astronomy. Or physics.

He was also deeply disappointed that bathing in the seas of Venus was an unlikely event - unless you happen to have a suit capable of withstanding the heat of molten lead!

(Edit) - he was also deeply disturbed that moon landings would disturb the ecosystem of the moon. So let's add biology to the list of 'nopes'..

[adam 40]

Re: "Dark" side of the moon

Ahhhhahhahhhaahhhhhhahhhhahhhhaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh! Ah ah ah ahhhhhh, ah ah ah ahhhhhh, ah ah ah ahhhhhhhah hah hahhhh....

[that one in the corner]

Re: "Dark" side of the moon

If only Pink Floyd had called their album "Back Side of The Moon" then at least we'd be able to say that people refusing to call it Farside would just be arsing about.

[Neil Barnes]

Deep space?

Only 50k miles past the moon doesn't strike me as all that deep, compared to say, the Voyager probes' positions. And certainly not in comparison to what the James Webb telescope is looking at.

Is there a handy guide - ideally in El Reg Linguini or similar - as to the distance required for shallow, middling, and deep space?

[adam 40]

Re: Deep space?

Nein.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Deep space?

"Is there a handy guide - ideally in El Reg Linguini or similar - as to the distance required for shallow, middling, and deep space?"

Shades of Purple?

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Deep space?

Agreed. I'd say "deep space" had to be, at the least, outside the orbit of the furthest known planet (That's Pluto[*], in my book!!)

[*] At least when it's outside the orbit of Uranus, since it also spends some time closer than that

[Sceptic Tank]

after 50 years of gazing up and wondering "what if?"

Hopefully we don't spend another 50 years gazing and wondering "WTF?"

Still not sure why we want to go back there. Did somebody leave their car keys behind? If you want to go and sit in a dusty place, why not just move to the Kalahari? Robotic exploitation of space is the way to go. No human is going to Mars for a long, long, long time.

[werdsmith]

Some people have that piece of humanity that causes us to explore, discover and push the envelope to ever further frontiers, the piece that has brought us so far.

Some people don’t.

[TVU]

"Some people have that piece of humanity that causes us to explore, discover and push the envelope to ever further frontiers, the piece that has brought us so far"

Indeed, and this is the future history of humanity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH3c1QZzRK4

[Anonymous Coward]

>Some people have that piece of humanity that causes us to explore, discover and push the envelope to ever further frontiers,

And in the case of the Apollo program - those people were the Nazis

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor live coverage of flyby, NASA answered criticism with new Nasa stream for Artemis footage.

During the post outbound powered flyby burn, press conference, NASA answered to the criticism several times, regarding the poor live footage during yesterday's event. There were no images of the moon as Orion came out from behind the moon, where it had been in a signal blackout for 35 minutes, after getting to with 80 miles of the surface. This hasn't helped conspiracy theorists, because there was clearly some moon footage being displayed on large monitors just before the signal was supposedly re-established.

Those watching such streams have become accustomed to the way SpaceX does things nowadays, 'warts n' all), though even SpaceX cuts feeds when something goes wrong) and many expected far more footage from the flyby yesterday, 'unedited' and unrefined, even if poor quality.

During the press conference they published a new link, (hardly a user-friendly one), to stream the live footage as it's happening.

https://go.nasa.gov/3UUN7HR

Might be useful to bookmark, but as of posting, it's not broadcasting anything, so much to the NASa leadership team stating it would, from now on.

As a final point the flyby footage approach to the moon went from left to right in terms of time-lapse, but the flyby graphic the Orion's approach to the moon is shown right to left with respect to the earth, so the camera footage, Orion orientation must have been upside down, if that's possible in space, in terms of the horizontal plane. Well, it confused me.

[Gene Cash]

Re: Poor live coverage of flyby, NASA answered criticism with new Nasa stream for Artemis footage.

It seems to be live now, but it's interesting to see the link redirects to video.ibm.com - perhaps that's where the problem is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Poor live coverage of flyby, NASA answered criticism with new Nasa stream for Artemis footage.

The link to the IBM domain, might explain why NASA only showed 'Big Blue', aka. the earth, and no footage of the moon during the flyby. :)

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Poor live coverage of flyby, NASA answered criticism with new Nasa stream for Artemis footage.

Didn't they also say nobody was allowed to film the launchpad ?

[katrinab]

"57,250 miles [1439650 Devon Fatbergs] beyond the Moon" doesn't appear to be a particularly long distance, compared to for example Voyager 1 which is about 7bn km (7Tm?) [109375683598 Devon Fatbergs] away from home.

[Gene Cash]

Not just OMOTENASHI

They haven't heard from NEAScout either, which is sad, because I was really interested in the mission.