Artemis II Astronauts Splash Down Off California's Coast 53
NASA's Artemis II crew safely splashed down off the California coast after completing a 10-day trip around the moon and back. "This is not just an accomplishment for NASA," sad NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. "This is an accomplishment for humanity, again, a historic mission to the moon and back." From a report: Isaacman is aboard the USS John. P Murtha Navy recovery vessel, where the astronauts will be brought once they've been retrieved from the Orion capsule, and he shared "there is a lot to celebrate right now on on a mission well accomplished for Artemis II."
Isaacman also complimented the crew as "absolutely professional astronauts, wonderful communicators and almost poets" "" as well as "ambassadors from humanity to the stars." "I can't imagine a better crew than the Artemis II crew that just completed a perfect mission right now. We are back in the business of sending astronauts to the moon and bringing them back safely.
This is just the beginning. We are going to get back into doing this with frequency, sending missions to the moon until we land on it in 2028 and start building our base." Isaacman also said it's time to start preparing for Artemis III, expected to launch in 2027. You can watch the moment of the splashdown here.
Isaacman also complimented the crew as "absolutely professional astronauts, wonderful communicators and almost poets" "" as well as "ambassadors from humanity to the stars." "I can't imagine a better crew than the Artemis II crew that just completed a perfect mission right now. We are back in the business of sending astronauts to the moon and bringing them back safely.
This is just the beginning. We are going to get back into doing this with frequency, sending missions to the moon until we land on it in 2028 and start building our base." Isaacman also said it's time to start preparing for Artemis III, expected to launch in 2027. You can watch the moment of the splashdown here.
Watched the livestream (Score:5, Interesting)
It was good to see all go as planned.
One step closer to Moon Base Alpha.
Re:Watched the livestream (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Watched the livestream (Score:5, Informative)
It was good to see all go as planned.
Except for the tactical radio failure after they landed, where they had to relay comms to Houston and back out to sea because the rescue team couldn't hear them. That was pure comedy gold. When I heard the words "Did you press the push-to-talk button," I wept with joy.
No idea what the actual problem was — probably some encrypted communication misconfiguration, channel misconfiguration, stealth mode setting, bad PTT button, or other similar weirdness. And of course, the internal clocks would have drifted by probably several hundred microseconds over the course of the mission because of time dilation, so in the unlikely event that they're using encryption that is ridiculously timing-sensitive, that could also be an issue, but that seems unlikely.
Strong reason to use plain VHF radios if they aren't already.
Anyway, I'll be curious to hear the postmortem on that one.
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When I heard the words "Did you press the push-to-talk button," I wept with joy.
I too chuckled.
Should have sent them up with a backup Baofeng.</joke>
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Strong reason to use plain VHF radios if they aren't already.
Just thought of that for a sec. Yeah. Marine handheld VHF would be handy. Suppose they came down way off target and needed to call a nearby fishing boat for help. I'm surprised the Coast Guard didn't have some input into a minimum requirements list.
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Well, aside from anything else... coming down way off target wasn't really much of a possibility. They were either going to splash down on/very near target, or not at all. The reentry corridor coming from the Moon is extremely narrow, and missing it long or short would not result in a splashdown (either bounce off the atmosphere or burn up), and similar for heat shield or parachute issues.
Re: Watched the livestream (Score:2)
Bounce off the atmosphere? Too much scifi I think
Re: Watched the livestream (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not scifi at all.
They hit the Earth's atmosphere at just below escape velocity (they were going 11.024 km/s, escape velocity is 11.186 km/s). If you do that at an angle that is too shallow, you skip off the atmosphere and enter an elliptical orbit. They intentionally did one skip to bleed off some energy, to give them a more precise entry to the landing zone.
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I'd assume they were using VHF radios -- since that's what the Navy uses for most of those types of operations, especially if they have divers involved. The VHF radios are line-of-sight so I would assume they would have some sort of antenna cluster on the module. Could be that it got knocked loose, radio connector became loose or just something else like that. Since they were getting traffic, one would assume everything else was setup right.
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No idea what the actual problem was — probably some encrypted communication misconfiguration, channel misconfiguration, stealth mode setting, bad PTT button, or other similar weirdness. And of course, the internal clocks would have drifted by probably several hundred microseconds over the course of the mission because of time dilation, so in the unlikely event that they're using encryption that is ridiculously timing-sensitive, that could also be an issue, but that seems unlikely.
If the problem was misconfigured encryption, wouldn't it have affected communication both ways? The Integrity crew could hear the rescue team, but not the other way around. Look, I have no experience with these radios, so someone who does, please clarify. I have no doubt that everyone trained on these radios (satphones?) and tested them. Be interesting to find out what happened.
In general, I found this mission to be somewhat more -- well, "chill" -- than others. Mostly plain language on technical matters w
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No idea what the actual problem was — probably some encrypted communication misconfiguration, channel misconfiguration, stealth mode setting, bad PTT button, or other similar weirdness. And of course, the internal clocks would have drifted by probably several hundred microseconds over the course of the mission because of time dilation, so in the unlikely event that they're using encryption that is ridiculously timing-sensitive, that could also be an issue, but that seems unlikely.
If the problem was misconfigured encryption, wouldn't it have affected communication both ways? The Integrity crew could hear the rescue team, but not the other way around.
You would think, but I've definitely heard of situations where that was not the case, where first responders from fire departments could talk to police, but not the other way around, or other similar situations, and IIRC, they blamed a misconfiguration in the encryption for those problems.
I'm guessing that the encrypted radios have a key that they use for sending, and have multiple keys that they can receive, so that you can always tell which entity's radio is sending. If that's the case, then if radio A h
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Did they try turning it off and on? Maybe they were holding it wrong.
Heh. Since space is not a Right-To-Repair jurisdiction, maybe they couldn't run diags.
Back to the PTT, I can just see the commander yelling at a Motorola handmic floating in front of his face, curlycord snaking into the dashboard...XKCD could do something funny with it.
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One step closer to Moon Base Alpha.
Hopefully not! Fortunately there doesn't appear to be a "Koenig" in the astronaut corps, at least right now. And Trump will probably insist on any lunar power plants being coal-fired anyway...
I gotta say - it was pretty cool to have a livestream from the capsule for so much of the return!
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The thing to watch out for is when the next spacesuit design has flare bottoms, that's when the lunatics (*) smuggle the facile (**) material through the airwaves (***)
(*) etymologically speaking
(**) onomato-typo
(***) at escape velocity
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T-shirts to block the sun? If the sunshades had failed, that would have been one thing, but opening the shades due to fear of overheating the windows? Who the hell tested them?
Post splashdown looked like a landing from the 60s and then coordinated by a wedding planner. Dragon capsules splash down and get picked up out of the water in minutes, not with rafts, multiple helicopters, and an hour to get out of the capsule. The
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The nonsense on the carrier deck with 4 copters all posing in formation, walking inside one-by-one, only after 20 minutes of photos looked like those crappy weddings where the photos are more important than the ceremony itself.
Correct. You can tell this is the case just from the blather, though. It wasn't a trip to the moon, it was a flyby! I'm not trying to diminish the accomplishment (if anything it's diminished by the cost, and the throwing away of formerly reusable engines, not by the fact that they didn't land) but lying about it is shitty of Jared Isaacman.
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One step closer to Moon Base Alpha.
Cool and all. But Apollo 8 was closer in 1968. Three steps back and 2 steps forward. Artemis is not the answer.
Congratulations, Elo....oh, never mind (Score:1)
Plan to spread the light of human consciousness to Planet B and interstellar space still on track?
No?
Anyway, good job NASA, well done.
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Given the current leadership of humanity, I, for one, welcome our alien overlords...
That's the generic (and wrong) space cadet reply (Score:2)
Look, I get it, some of us think fondly of the "glory days" of NASA when the experimental flights of Gemini and the moon flights of Apollo were underway and we wish for that spirit of great adventure again. I'm firmly in that camp, HOWEVER, the standard arguments always heard in that echo chamber of space fanboys ("NASA is starved for money compared to then", and "NASA is being micromanaged") are both very over-simplified AND just plain erroneous.
On the money issue: The primary argument here is that modern
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LOL outsource it to the same SpaceX who's repeated failure to meet targets and obligations are the reason Artemis III won't be landing on the Moon? SpaceX was contracted to supply the lander and is so far behind they have no idea when (or if) they will, so NASA has re-opened the competition and is trying to get Blue Origin back in the game.
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"SpaceX was contracted to supply the lander and is so far behind they have no idea when (or if) they will, so NASA has re-opened the competition and is trying to get Blue Origin back in the game"
in 2017, SpaceX was contracted for a lunar orbit which became the DearMoon project, scheduled for 2023 which Elon said would superduper happen.
In 2024, Yusaku Maezawa cancelled the project because of SpaceX's repeated changes of direction & developmental delays. I think SpaceX has done some terrific stuff but it
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I think that rebuilding NASA is a good idea. I do not think that the United States space program should go to any one company.
Improve the recovery! (Score:2)
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It kinda seemed like the Navy was trying to show off during the recovery. For the time they spent getting everything in place, they could have just towed the capsule back to the boat, and probably lifted it onto the deck quicker.
Re: Improve the recovery! (Score:1)
Yeah, I counted 6 small boats plus at least 3 helicopters (and a fourth one idle on the deck). The "porch" took forever to assemble. Was it over-engineering, political theatre, or sensible design?
Re: Improve the recovery! (Score:2)
Still using that ole Kubrick script, of course.
Why try new when old works?
Re: Improve the recovery! (Score:2)
I'd guess safety. Would you want to ride back to the recovery ship dangling from a chopper in a multi-ton capsule or up on the chopper itself?
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Why are we landing the capsule in water at all? Everything is in motion, and failures quickly cause the capsule to fill with water.
You'd need to find a suitable uninhabited, federally owned, landing spot with no obstructions, something not easy to do in the US. The Russians have the space to do it, we really don't, even out west.
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White Sand Missile Range comes to mind.
Yea, I was think about that as well. I wonder if it big enough to compensate for any landing errors without coming close to inhabited or other unsuitable landing areas.
Everyone's worry held heatshield together (Score:4, Interesting)
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The race is on, and there is pressure to show results before China does.
The real race is to develop a viable lander. China's seems to be on track for a 2029 landing, while NASA is relying on Blue Origin and SpaceX. SpaceX seem to be a long way off having a viable craft, and Blue Origin haven't said much but tend not to until they are ready for test flights. Both will probably need to do an unmanned demonstration landing and return to orbit before sending people.
Re: Everyone's worry held heatshield together (Score:3)
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Thanks for the link. I read the discussion here back when the Go decision was made, but did not see Manley's vid at the time.
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You could try this timely video from Scott Manley [youtube.com], for one.
I will admit (Score:3)
There is a part of me that is ever so slightly disappointed that they didn't emerge from the capsule wearing ape masks.
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$4.1B mission, $93B program (Score:2)
Not really expecting Funny on the story, but... (Score:2)
I guess it is a feel good story, but I was hoping (as usual) for a joke or something more substantive. Along the substantive dimension I think "robot" was the key and there doesn't seem to be anything here about that. So...
What's bothering me about the Artemis approach is that it's too much of an advertising thing without substance behind it. Whether the goal is to do more science on the moon or to work towards a permanent human base on the moon, this is not the best way to go about it. We already have the
Flight good, recovery not so much (Score:1)
Another record broke. (Score:2)