alt Hacker NewsLunar Flyby
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There is something uncanny about the bandwidth and quality of all the artifacts coming from this mission.
I've subsisted on photos from the Apollo missions and artistic renditions for so long that seeing the modern, high resolution real thing to be quite stirring in a way I didn't expect. It actually does make me believe that the future could be quite cool.
I have to admit, I've been an Artemis hater ($4 billion per launch lol) but the experience of watching people go back around the Moon has been incredibly inspiring, and it proves to me that maybe we can still do hard things
I listened to pretty much the entire fly by yesterday, and I was imagining how I would have spent my time at the windows with a camera. Listening to the comms made me think of that episode from From The Earth to the Moon where they take the astronauts out and give them geology lessons so they could be more productive with their descriptions.
I was also very curious of their descriptions during the eclipse where the Earth shine was lighting up the dark side of the moon to such a surreal look they couldn't really describe it. They were even commenting that they didn't feel the photos being taken were doing it justice either.
I also was wondering if they will make any modifications to the capsule since covering a window to block the Earth shine caused concern on the ground from some of the readings they were getting. Assuming it was overheating as they redirected air flow to the window. Then again, the following missions won't be so concerned with a single fly by so probably not something they'll address.
We already have images from the far side of the moon since the 2009's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter [1].
In theory, LRO is currently flying at lower orbit than Artemis I mission [2]. Shouldn't the LRO images be better? Maybe NASA has not disclosed all images?
Honest question: why the hype with these pictures?
[1] https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4109
[2] Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) -> ~50 km vs. Artemis I -> ~129 km
I think my favorite of all these images is https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/amf-art002e009287/. The sheer size difference, while simply a trick of perspective, makes Earth feel tiny and insignificant.
This is the best animation of the trajectory I've seen: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260406.html
I built a zoomable collection viewer for all NASA Artemis II + Apollo 8 gallery images at their full original resolutions—nearly 2 gigapixels across 104 images. Spanning 1968 Earthrise to 2026 Earthset:
https://zoomhub.net/showcase/photography/nasa
Try different layouts with L (grid, masonry, spiral, etc.), filter by gallery or camera, WASD/Q/E/Tab to navigate.
That one pic with Solar eclipse is amazing. Especially with the visible stars in the background. it's rare to see a pic from a man missioned with stars being visible in the background.
I shared some of these pictures with family members that hadn’t even heard of Artemis, and one asked if the blue thing was Mars. I am shook.
What is the licence on these images? I can't seen anything on the site or in the HTML.
I've been waiting for a new Earth Rise/Set shot (which is thankfully at least 5568x3712px from a NIKON D5).
Edit: https://www.nasa.gov/nasa-brand-center/images-and-media/
> You may use this material for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits, computer graphical simulations and Internet Web pages.
Are the bright spots to the lower right in this photo galaxies or just camera artifacts[0]? Unreal photo either way.
[0]https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/art002e009301/art002e00...
Wonder how it feels after being out there, seeing that, then coming back like alright back in the system I go.
Zoomed into several of the lunar surface photos and noticed some of the very small impact craters are in a regularly spaced straight line.
Looks to me as if a meteorite came in at a shallow angle and basically skipped across the surface. Leaving dimpled craters as it bounced. Looks very similar to rocks skipping on a pond. Am I correct or is there another explanation for these?
Amaze, amaze, amaze!
Loved the Project Hail Mary quote from one of the mission controllers. :)
This bright spot in world news has been good for my mental health and general motivation. Thank you NASA!
Just wanted to say how moving I find these pictures. Proof of what humanity is capable of :)
I started rewatching For All Mankind a week or so before the Artemis II launch, so it's been pretty wild to watch an alt-history about people going to and settling on the Moon and Mars, and then to see real life people just starting to return to the Moon at the same time.
Was there any writeup on the actual goals and accomplishments of this mission. I'm sure there is some very valuable scientif8c data and observations done, but what exactly are those (other than 'wow' media)?
It's a bit tricky to navigate between all the amazing photos NASA Artemis crew captured so I vibe coded (Codex) a simple site with full screen full res view and arrow navigation:
feedback welcome
Can someone ELI5 how it is one side of the moon is never seen on Earth? The moon orbits and also rotates, does it not?
I wish they would’ve flown by and taken a picture of the Apollo 11 lunar landing site.
I think it would’ve been a super cool throwback to the history of lunar exploration; maybe it’s just me but I think it would’ve been really exciting. It would basically be the like visiting a UNESCO (moon?) heritage site.
I hope they listened to Dark Side of the Moon on the flyby.
Gorgeous, awe-inspiring photos.
Tangentially, did the NASA website move to WordPress? I thought it was Drupal, the Drupal official website even had a case study about nasa.gov. I see wp-content links on the site and there is no Drupal behaviors in JavaScript and I didn't notice any of the usual drupal classes in the source
Some of these photos look so "fake". Maybe because of how they are lit or the lack of atmospheric distortion, they don't quite looks real (I'm not disputing that they are authentic, they just look a bit weird)
I am really worried about their return entry. I got emotionally invested in the crew, meanwhile there have been voices saying Orion’s heat shield is made of garbagium and tested with undergrad level simplistic physics models.
Then I read about the NASA administrator being some sort of “charisma” bravado guy and the government pressures to get to the moon during Trump presidency.
How NASA safety standards are somehow 1/10 of the ones they impose on external private companies who would never be allowed to do crew launch with that kind of level of risk.
I think I am just going to forget about it for now until I hear about hopefully safe return in mainstream news so I don’t end up with heart attack. They really should take mainly single people without families on these missions imo.
We're so not accustomed to moon pictures taken with "normal" cameras. These almost look like 3D renders to me, it's incredible
This is the best shot, as it is shown with the perspective of a person inside the space ship. All the other ones are just high res versions of the Moon pics we've all seen before.
The eclipse photos are absolutely jaw-dropping.
Very cool pictures, especially those ones backlit by the Sun are something new. ie real photos that we usually only see in sci-fi games or movies.
But the real question is: Who of those 4 clogged up the toilet? That's what the public demands to know.
Really cool! Artemis III will be even more breathtaking I think https://www.nasa.gov/mission/artemis-iii/
I cannot fathom what it must be like to witness this in-person. The pictures are spectacular but to spend time experiencing it outside the window in your proximity must be overwhelming in the most incredible way.
The best camera position for landscape photography. Well done.
Surpassing Apollo 13’s distance record after so many decades is kind of wild. It really shows how infrequent deep-space human missions have been, despite all the progress in other areas.
Amazing ! looks cool!
The solar eclipse pictures are absolutely beautiful.
What a trip. They must all be so excited!
I hope they will come back as ambassadors of peace.
odd they don't do a carousel. I get that it's not necessary and minimalism has a joy of it's own, but click-through would be useful.
what about a video ?
I've been thoroughly disappointed in NASA's handling of "public relations" part of the mission
every significant achievement point became a publicity stunt of lowest quality, with forced line reads and little practicality
I'm eagerly awaiting future engineering challenges and science results - but I'd want NASA to concentrate on that first, and farce show-making second
honest question - why any talented people would still work for NASA when real projects are from companies like spacex?
> Lunar Flyby
I though they were going _to the moon_, not "flyby".
NASA is a pale reminiscent of its former self. Sad.
These things are so damn cool!
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God, they must have hated being forced to speak to the president
From Google AI Review:
> No, the Artemis II mission will not land on the moon. It is a 10-day crewed, deep-space flyby test flight designed to verify spacecraft systems before future landing missions. The crew will circle the moon before returning to Earth, serving as a critical step toward landing later in the decade.
Don't get mad at me. My question is, why did we have to send this mission? This is not the first time we are going to land on the moon, so why this prerequisite?
Are full size/larger images available somewhere? 1920x1280px seems low.
Edit: Found 'em: https://images.nasa.gov/search?page=1&media=image&yearStart=...