Tag: NASA
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The gravity of their experience hasn’t quite set in for the Artemis II astronauts
On the home stretch of their nine-day mission, the four astronauts flying aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft are just beginning to reflect on their experience of flying beyond the Moon. Their memories of Monday’s encounter with the Moon are still fresh as they return to Earth, heading for reentry and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on…
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Artemis II returns to Earth after historic 10-day mission around the Moon
After 10 days, over 800,000 km traveled, and a historic flyby of the Moon, Artemis II returned to Earth on Friday evening. Orion CM-003 Integrity, which served as the home for the mission’s four-person crew since April 1, reentered Earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean before ultimately splashing down off the coast of San Diego,…
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Artemis 2’s trip around the moon enters the home stretch — here’s how to watch the splashdown
A view from a camera mounted on one of the Orion spacecraft’s solar array wings shows Orion’s engines and thrusters in the foreground, and Earth in the background. (NASA via YouTube) The crew of NASA’s round-the-moon test mission crossed the halfway point between the moon and Earth today on their homeward journey — and they’re…
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The Moon is already on Google Maps—did Artemis II really tell us anything new?
The data pipeline from NASA’s Artemis II mission opened to full blast a few hours after looping behind the far side of the Moon on Monday night, when the Orion spacecraft established a laser communications link with a receiving station back on Earth. A cache of high-resolution images began streaming down through this connection. NASA…
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Finally, Artemis delivers some exceptional, high-quality photos of the Moon
NASA’s Artemis II mission, carrying four astronauts on an out-of-this-world journey, flew around the Moon on Monday. The crew members took turns describing the stunning landscape below and captured images of Earth rising behind the Moon, in communications with Mission Control in Houston. What they did not send back in real time, due to a…
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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…