We are about to fly folks. Rejoice in the moment.
Go Artemis Go!
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Lift-off! Godspeed Artemis 1.
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Great news!
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Beautiful launch! I was close to calling it a night when the commentator said they’d worked through the hold issues.
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Awesomeness defined!
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Wierdly emotional for me. Probably mentioned it before, but as a kid fascinated by Apollo, I never imagined it would take this long to go back. Seems like so much bad news these days. Nice to have something beautiful and inspirational again.
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As an audio engineer who has done a lot of live stuff, I had to smile at the technological irony of the inability to get the audio working in the control room for the congratulations and tie-cutting.
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Range radar tracking went down temporarily, leading to a no-go hold, because of a … get this guys … faulty ethernet switch. Kudos, btw, to the two Red Team guys with tool boxes who literally retorqued a leaky LH2 valve in the mobile launcher. That is the Apollo spirit. Alive and well at NASA.
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From what I understand, the last expansion module was launched on Oct 31. So, it seems for now they’re done.
Gotta love that. Saw the bit where they introduced them. It was like, yeah, this is Bob and Ed (sorry, making up their names) and we fixed the oil leak and got the car back on the track😝
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The whole Hubble / WEBB / Artemis thing has me as giddy as I was following the Apollo Missions when I was a kid.
I also saw - maybe here - that China has given up on their heavy lift rocket system. Not sure if it’s tech that they cant overcome or lack of money.
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Awesome! Working in the space industry, but on unmanned stuff, my hat’s off to those engineers. Space flight is hard enough. Add manned to that and the requirements instantly get much harder.
As a kid I also followed Apollo with great interest. I hope this flight goes well. I hope the next, manned loop around the moon goes well. I’m really looking forward to the next manned landing. I hope I’m still around to see them make a run at Mars!
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Mission update for day 2 of Orion’s cruise to the Moon. About half way through the update you’ll encounter a clever tech trick they’re using for cameras mounted at the ends of solar arrays. Orion is flying an on-board WiFi network. The bus is transferring commands to and images from the cameras wirelessly over its own local network. Give the smart dude/lass who came up with this idea a medal for thinking outside the box. Artemis 1 is bristling with new technologies being put to the test in the space environment during this flight.
https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2022/11/17/orion-continues-toward-moon-callisto-activated/
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Well at least wifi is only for cameras. When it goes to mission critical control functions. Wifi redundancies will have to have reliability that exceeds the savings of hauling the signal and multiplex bus hard wiring.
For those who want to follow mission progress in a new (to me) and unique way, check out the Artemis Real-Time Orbit Website (AROW).
This looks a lot like Ops tools I’ve seen developed in the past as an engineering visual aid. One can control a virtual camera to view Orion from any angle in one mode. Note the level of fidelity. The Earth, Sun and Moon orientation relative to the spacecraft is accurately rendered. The orbit can be depicted from three perspectives in the Mission View, Earth-centric, Moon-centric and spacecraft-centric. I love it and would hope to see NASA stand up a similar site for the succeeding missions. A bit of advice, the site is best viewed and manipulated with a laptop or desktop machine. Doesn’t render particularly well on a tablet or phone.
Have fun!
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That’s awesome. Thanks!
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One really neat thing is the impact of the belief there may be water on the moon.
If there is water on the moon, you can split off hydrogen from oxygen and make rocket fuel. Such a prospect would be transformative because the moon could be used as a base for deep-space missions without the cost and burden of lifting heavy rocket fuel off the Earth, which has six times the gravity of the moon.
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I wonder what power cables they use. 