Artemis II Astronauts Splash Down Off California's Coast
- Reference: 0181563446
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/04/11/0052229/artemis-ii-astronauts-splash-down-off-californias-coast
- Source link:
> Isaacman is aboard the USS John. P Murtha Navy recovery vessel, where the astronauts will be brought once they've been retrieved from the Orion capsule, and he shared "there is a lot to celebrate right now on on a mission well accomplished for Artemis II."
>
> Isaacman also complimented the crew as "absolutely professional astronauts, wonderful communicators and almost poets" "" as well as "ambassadors from humanity to the stars." "I can't imagine a better crew than the Artemis II crew that just completed a perfect mission right now. We are back in the business of sending astronauts to the moon and bringing them back safely.
>
> This is just the beginning. We are going to get back into doing this with frequency, sending missions to the moon until we land on it in 2028 and start building our base." Isaacman also said it's time to start preparing for Artemis III, expected to launch in 2027.
You can watch the moment of the splashdown [3]here .
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/10/science/live-news/artemis-2-splashdown-astronauts-return
[2] https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/04/06/1924227/artemis-ii-astronauts-break-apollo-record-for-farthest-distance-humans-have-traveled-from-earth
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfhDuOHMp0A
Congratulations, Elo....oh, never mind (Score:2)
Plan to spread the light of human consciousness to Planet B and interstellar space still on track?
No?
Anyway, good job NASA, well done.
Congrats. Can we cancel the program already? (Score:1)
Artemis/SLS/Orion is a corrupt money pit of overpriced, behind schedule, unreusable, antiquated tech.
If we have lunar ambitions then NASA needs to outsource the delivery aspect to SpaceX and Blue Origin.
[1]https://finance.yahoo.com/econ... [yahoo.com]
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/u-government-spending-88-billion-111740601.html
Re: (Score:2)
LOL outsource it to the same SpaceX who's repeated failure to meet targets and obligations are the reason Artemis III won't be landing on the Moon? SpaceX was contracted to supply the lander and is so far behind they have no idea when (or if) they will, so NASA has re-opened the competition and is trying to get Blue Origin back in the game.
Improve the recovery! (Score:1)
Seriously... Why no use a big lifting helicopter and pluck the capsule out of the sea and plop it on the deck of the ship and then off load the astronauts. The whole process seems very outdated and inefficient.
Re: (Score:2)
It kinda seemed like the Navy was trying to show off during the recovery. For the time they spent getting everything in place, they could have just towed the capsule back to the boat, and probably lifted it onto the deck quicker.
Watched the livestream (Score:5, Interesting)
It was good to see all go as planned.
One step closer to Moon Base Alpha.
Re: (Score:3)
Hear, hear.
Re:Watched the livestream (Score:4, Informative)
> It was good to see all go as planned.
Except for the tactical radio failure after they landed, where they had to relay comms to Houston and back out to sea because the rescue team couldn't hear them. That was pure comedy gold. When I heard the words "Did you press the push-to-talk button," I wept with joy.
No idea what the actual problem was — probably some encrypted communication misconfiguration, channel misconfiguration, stealth mode setting, bad PTT button, or other similar weirdness. And of course, the internal clocks would have drifted by probably several hundred microseconds over the course of the mission because of time dilation, so in the unlikely event that they're using encryption that is ridiculously timing-sensitive, that could also be an issue, but that seems unlikely.
Strong reason to use plain VHF radios if they aren't already.
Anyway, I'll be curious to hear the postmortem on that one.
Re: (Score:2)
> When I heard the words "Did you press the push-to-talk button," I wept with joy.
I too chuckled.
Should have sent them up with a backup Baofeng.
Re: (Score:2)
> Strong reason to use plain VHF radios if they aren't already.
Just thought of that for a sec. Yeah. Marine handheld VHF would be handy. Suppose they came down way off target and needed to call a nearby fishing boat for help. I'm surprised the Coast Guard didn't have some input into a minimum requirements list.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, aside from anything else... coming down way off target wasn't really much of a possibility. They were either going to splash down on/very near target, or not at all. The reentry corridor coming from the Moon is extremely narrow, and missing it long or short would not result in a splashdown (either bounce off the atmosphere or burn up), and similar for heat shield or parachute issues.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd assume they were using VHF radios -- since that's what the Navy uses for most of those types of operations, especially if they have divers involved. The VHF radios are line-of-sight so I would assume they would have some sort of antenna cluster on the module. Could be that it got knocked loose, radio connector became loose or just something else like that. Since they were getting traffic, one would assume everything else was setup right.
Re: (Score:2)
> No idea what the actual problem was — probably some encrypted communication misconfiguration, channel misconfiguration, stealth mode setting, bad PTT button, or other similar weirdness. And of course, the internal clocks would have drifted by probably several hundred microseconds over the course of the mission because of time dilation, so in the unlikely event that they're using encryption that is ridiculously timing-sensitive, that could also be an issue, but that seems unlikely.
If the problem was misconfigured encryption, wouldn't it have affected communication both ways? The Integrity crew could hear the rescue team, but not the other way around. Look, I have no experience with these radios, so someone who does, please clarify. I have no doubt that everyone trained on these radios (satphones?) and tested them. Be interesting to find out what happened.
In general, I found this mission to be somewhat more -- well, "chill" -- than others. Mostly plain language on technical matters w
Re: (Score:2)
> One step closer to Moon Base Alpha.
Hopefully not! Fortunately there doesn't appear to be a "Koenig" in the astronaut corps, at least right now. And Trump will probably insist on any lunar power plants being coal-fired anyway...
I gotta say - it was pretty cool to have a livestream from the capsule for so much of the return!
Re: (Score:2)
The thing to watch out for is when the next spacesuit design has flare bottoms, that's when the lunatics (*) smuggle the facile (**) material through the airwaves (***)
(*) etymologically speaking
(**) onomato-typo
(***) at escape velocity