I just keep forgetting about the moon mission (too much awful US-related news, and also too much life stuff happening). Looks like they're actually doing it!

The part that I'm actually excited about is the perspective of looking back at Earth from the Moon. That is COOL. I spent some time my last night in NZ looking up at the Moon, thinking about astronauts, and also tilting my head to try to understand why the moon looked upside-down to me from NZ!

Pretty pictures here (thanks for the link, @merrdiff.bsky.social !)

https://images.nasa.gov/

I have SUCH mixed feelings about the whole mission... and rockets... and I want to be excited but also fuck Starlink....

NASA Image and Video Library

NASA Image and Video Library, serving up consolidated imagery and videos in one searchable location. Users can download content in multiple sizes and resolutions and see the metadata associated with images, including EXIF/camera data on many images.

NASA Image and Video Library
@sundogplanets @merrdiff.bsky.social I love that people latched on to this as some good news in a sea of awful

@sundogplanets

Does it help to remember that rockets generally do not burn fossil fuels? (I looked this up because it came up earlier -- the SRBs (first stage) are mainly aluminum powder, and the capsule engine is hydrogen + oxygen.)

@woozle Doesn't really help because I just started talking a lot to atmospheric chemists and learning about how bad aluminum oxide is for the atmosphere... sorry.
@sundogplanets Important to know! Thanks for the info, even if it's not pleasant. :-S
@woozle @sundogplanets no doubt a lot of FF used to produce that hydrogen and oxygen too 😒
@sundogplanets
I'm so glad that it's NASA doing this & not That Company.
@Katzedecimal @sundogplanets Yes, the Artemis II flight has no components from SpaceX.
@sundogplanets
I feel I'm not nearly as excited about Artemis II as I imagine people would have been about Apollo 8 back in 1968.
@sundogplanets @merrdiff.bsky.social just got a notification that there will be big Northern Lights again in the next couple of days.