At least a little beyond. Like the orbital height beyond.
For those unaware, if the weather holds, later this evening East Coast time, NASA will launch the Artemis II mission from Cape Canaveral with the intention of sending a crew of four astronauts—three Americans, one Canadian—to the Moon. The last man on the Moon was in December 1972—more than half a century ago.
Artemis II will not land on the Moon. Nor will Artemis III. NASA now plans for Artemis III to stay in low Earth orbit and practice docking with lunar landers being designed and built by private companies. Artemis IV will be the first Artemis mission scheduled to land on the Moon, and that should be sometime in 2028.
The New York Times published an article yesterday looking at Artemis II and all the hardware going into the mission: the Space Launch System (SLS), the Orion spacecraft, its service module, and the crew module named Integrity.
This graphic heads the article and sits above the main body text. My screenshot captures a still of a repeating animation of an illustration of the spacecraft’s trajectory.
It sits below the title, but above the main body as a hero image. But in the main body, you have several illustrations and diagrams detailing the hardware. Personally, I loved seeing the SLS assembly compared to the Saturn V assembly, of which I have a LEGO kit someday I will eventually build.
Fun fact the article points out, this will be the first time human eyes see the “Dark Side” of the Moon. For clarity, there is no dark side of the Moon. Rather the Moon is tidally locked to Earth, meaning the same side always face Earth and you can see the Sun’s reflected light wax and wane over the lunar cycle. But the light does not disappear, it simply moves to what is better described as the “Far Side” of the Moon. And NASA planned the original Apollo missions so the landers arrived at the beginning of the lunar day, hence the astronaut in the orbiter only ever saw the Far Side at night.
Almost certainly we will get some pretty cool photographs.
Anyway, check the article out. I loved it. Space is cool. And fingers crossed for this evening’s launch.
Credit for the piece goes to Marco Hernandez.