Livestream: NASA’s Artemis II Crew Flies Around the Moon

 

[VIDEO] The four astronaut crew of Artemis II aboard their Orion capsule Integrity will break the distance record set by Apollo 13. They will be the furthest distance from Earth any human beings have been, a record set by the ill-fated crew of Apollo 13 that suffered a castrophic failure that cancelled an attempt to land on the moon.

Hope you enjoy, even if you only watch the replay. At the time I wrote this the crew was about 27 minutes before they reach the far side of the moon, where they will lose contact with the Earth for about 40 minutes.

Now I want to pop Apollo 13 the movie into the old VCR....err get with the times I can stream it now! 

Artemis II pilot Victor Glover

 He's about to make history as being the first Black American to orbit the moon. Of course he was quoted as saying it shouldn't be about his race, to go to the Moon as we had during the 1960s with the Apollo missions is a human achievement.

Artemis II launched Wednesday sending four people which also includes the first Canadian and woman to orbit the moon. The design is like an Apollo Command capsule, although there is a much differently designed service module that will propel them around the moon and return them to the earth.

Glover before becoming an astronaut served as a pilot in the US Navy and according to this NY Post article was formerly a two-sport athlete in football and wrestling in his college years.

NASA is live streaming coverage of the Artemis II mission here. [VIDEO]

Let's go back to space: Voyager 1

 

Check out Voyager 1's position here.

Voyager 1 was launched on Sept 5, 1977 and is currently still sending data back to Earth even in what is called interstellar space. It is the further man-made object away from Earth. 

Voyager 1 is further away from Earth than its sister probe Voyager 2 (launched August 20, 1977) and also Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 (currently derelict in space though also far away from Earth).

Both of the Voyager probes have golden records which I have linked to on this blog in the past. They were designed to be found by any extraterrestrial species that may run across these probes. The records are like time capsules and who knows they may well outlast human civilizations.

Of course here's the deal. While Voyager 1 at least has left the heliopause which is the boundary between the solar wind of our Sun and the plasma of other stars in our galaxy. So whatever instruments the probes still have and certainly whatever energy it has remaining has been used to collect data outside of our solar system.

Beyond the heliopause is a region known as the Oort cloud and Voyager 1 is expected to reach that area of space in about 300 years. Of course a lot can happen in that time, to Earth especially. And as a huge science fiction fan, I would expect that humanity could beat Voyager 1 to the Oort cloud well before that.

And it would take about 30,000 years to for the probe to pass through it. Again, it's possible that we may beat that probe through that area of space. That is unless "warp drive" - a future faster than light propulsion system actually being studied by physicists - becomes a reality and bridges the vast distances within our galaxy.

As far as any extraterrestrial visitors. Who knows? Perhaps the idea of a UFO - and thus alien visitors - are a reality. And it's also possible that any other advanced lifeforms like ourselves - humanity - might not have yet figured out how to bridge the vast distances in our galaxy as of yet. Who knows if as long as the Voyagers remain out there if they will encounter any other life forms.

Michael Collins R.I.P.

Michael Collins remained in the Apollo 11 Command Module as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made history as the first men or humans to actually walk on Earth's celestial neighbor/satellite the moon in July 1969. He died on the 28th according to the statement you see below posted to IG after a battle with cancer. Neil Armstrong the first man to walk on the moon died in 2012 and Buzz Aldrin is the only surviving member of that historic flight crew for that historic NASA mission.

Live Stream from NASA TV: Astronauts Return Home in SpaceX's Crew Dragon Spacecraft

[VIDEO] I just thought this belongs here as once upon a time when I was a child this used to fascinate me. As a Star Trek fan, I liked that we had people going into space on their own "star trek".

The live stream you see above will begin at 4:15 PM Chicago time. You will see the spacecraft Endeavor depart the International Space Station and return to earth.

In this case the trek here is two astronauts coming home aboard Space X's spacecraft. This flight Crew Dragon Demo-2 is said to be the first US space flight operated by a commercial provider. The space shuttle program which ended during the Obama administration in 2011. STS-135 was the last space shuttle mission.

Who in this audience has someone inspired to be a NASA astronaut in the future? 

Apollo 11 returns to earth July 24, 1969 - 50 years ago

EDITED Sept 3, 2019 - Sorry I missed that the title had the wrong month as I marked the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission. Sorry for this oversight!

Today is the day that the Apollo 11 mission that put men on the moon returned to the earth. Mission commander the late Neil Armstrong, lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin, and command module pilot Michael Collins were launched on their lunar mission on July 16, 1969. On July 20, 1969, Armstrong & Aldrin landed on the moon with their lunar module named Eagle.

This past spring I saw a documentary titled Apollo 11 which used footage shot 50 years ago of the events leading up the the launch of Apollo 11, then the mission itself, and then the final stages of this mission. That documentary was given a limited release in the nation during that time.

I really became fascinated with space by the time I got to high school - GO FALCONS - and had the ambition to become an astronaut. It was always fascinating that years before my birth astronauts were already going where no one has gone before in this case the moon. We didn't yet need one of those fancy spacecraft with warp drive just the tech and engineering available to go to our closest celestial neighbor.

50 years later we celebrate the accomplishments of the mission that landed men on the moon's surface. Unfortunately I see an ig post that shows that most young people in America are more interested in becoming professional YouTubers (a laudable goal) as opposed to becoming astronauts. What could stir our young people's interest (especially minorities) to take on careers in aerospace?

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A post shared by CNBC (@cnbc) on Jul 22, 2019 at 7:05pm PDT

I wanted to offer this final tidbit although it appears he wasn't directly involved with this effort. I'm sure Chris Kraft who was NASA's very first flight director in the 1960s was indirectly involved in the national effort to send a man to the moon and then return him to the earth. Mr. Kraft died two days after the 50th anniversary of the lunar landing at 95. It's still fascinating to learn the roles played by various people over 50 years ago in America's space program.