Cue the conspiracy theorists…
Yesterday was a big day for the future of space exploration, as NASA launched their Artemis II mission to perform the first crewed lunar flyby in 50 years.
The Artemis program was officially established in 2017 with the goal of returning humans to the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972. The program plans to establish a permanent base on the moon with the hopes of ultimately leading to human exploration of Mars.
The first flight, Artemis I, took place in 2022 and was an uncrewed mission to orbit the moon. And yesterday, the second mission, Artemis II, officially launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, this time with 4 crew members who will spend 10 days in space aboard the Orion spacecraft to complete a flyby of the moon.
Artemis II will spend about 24 hours in earth’s orbit, completing checks and systems verifications before completing a “translunar burn” which will launch the capsule on its trajectory towards the moon. And on day 6 of the mission, the 4 astronauts onboard Orion will become the first humans to lay eyes on the dark side of the moon in over half a century.
Basically, NASA knows where the moon is going to be at a certain time so they’re launching the spacecraft to be in the area as the moon passes, with Orion coming within about 4,000 miles of the moon at its closest point. And that may sound like they’re still pretty far away from the moon (because they are), but at that point the crew will be about 250,000 miles from Earth.
Isn’t space travel amazing?
Well yesterday when Artemis II was launched, thousands of people in Florida stepped outside their homes and offices hoping to catch a glimpse of the Space Launch System propelling Orion into space. And those who managed to see it for themselves got one heck of a show – including this video taken by none other than…the Mayor of Flavortown, Guy Fieri.
Others, though, had a harder time spotting the rocket…
Lauren Kreidler, a meteorologist for WINK News in southwest Florida, shared a video of her station’s crew gathered outside watching what they thought was Orion blasting into space. Everybody had their phones out, capturing pictures and videos of the historic spaceflight while marveling at its speed:
“Oh that baby’s zooming.”
But upon further inspection (Kreidler zoomed in), it turns out that what they were watching was actually just…a commercial airplane.
What a disappointment.
@weatherwithlauren truly a humbling experience 😂#artemis #florida
♬ Monkeys Spinning Monkeys – Kevin MacLeod & Kevin The Monkey
Somebody joked in the comments that they weren’t watching Artemis II but actually “Allegiant II, flying back to Michigan,” while others apparently had the same experience trying to spot the spacecraft:
“I’m pretty sure 90% of us in Florida are admitting we had the same experience! My family and I thought we saw the rocket 5 different times. Nope. They were ALL planes”
For everybody who missed the launch yesterday, the next chance to see an Artemis mission rocket into space will come in mid-2027 with Artemis III, which plans to conduct docking tests in low-earth orbit with SpaceX’s Starship HLS and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon.
On the bright side though, their next chance to see an Allegiant flight to Las Vegas will probably come much sooner.
