Month: April 2026

Earthset

Posted on by dubiago
Earthset captured through the Orion spacecraft window at 6:41 p.m. EDT, April 6, 2026, during the Artemis II crew’s flyby of the Moon. A muted blue Earth with bright white clouds sets behind the cratered lunar surface.
The dark portion of Earth is experiencing nighttime. On Earth’s day side, swirling clouds are visible over the Australia and Oceania region.
In the foreground, Ohm crater has terraced edges and a flat floor interrupted by central peaks. Central peaks form in complex craters when the lunar surface, liquefied on impact, splashes upwards during the crater’s formation.

Artemis II

Posted on by dubiago

Looking at the moon, knowing there are people around it, is such a surreal thing. The last Apollo mission took place years before I was born, and I grew up when the Space Shuttle was all there really was–we had taken a step backwards, especially when considering the scope of its mission was to assemble a space station and it didn’t start doing that until a couple of decades after it began flying.

Integrity

Maybe this is truly the start of a permanent presence up there, despite the comings and goings of various administrations with a multitude of incompatible objectives (and budget cuts) that blow with the winds. I still have hope that having space companies more separate from all of those political winds like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Axiom, etc. will help perpetuate that momentum.