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4/3/2026 5:11:31 PM

4/3/2026 7:34:44 PM

Aurora, FTW!

4/3/2026 8:53:44 PM

I was going to post these pictures earlier, but TWW had some technical difficulties with the fan in its toilet and with having two instances of MS Outlook open. A2 crew just went around the dark side of the moon yesterday making them now the humans who have traveled further from Earth than any other humans. They named a crater after Commander Weisman's late wife, had a stray nutella jar float by a camera, and have done a bunch of imaging and science. We should be getting some new shots of Earthrise and the dark side of the moon today as bandwidth allows. Here are some pictures of the launch from some friends/coworkers that were at the launch:






[Edited on April 7, 2026 at 10:04 AM. Reason : ]

4/7/2026 10:04:16 AM

Did anyone have classes with Christina Koch?! And did she ever sign up for TWW?!

4/7/2026 1:14:33 PM

christinak

4/7/2026 1:18:31 PM

^^I think she graduated Spring 2002. My freshman year was Autumn 2002 and I think I remember looking up to see if I had any overlap with her.

Fresh pictures from the far side of the moon! With a surprise photobomb by Venus! Go to images.nasa.gov for hi-res pictures.















[Edited on April 7, 2026 at 2:16 PM. Reason : ]

4/7/2026 2:12:28 PM

the amount of crying i did yesterday was insane

4/7/2026 2:34:05 PM

Quote :

"Did anyone have classes with Christina Koch?!"

She was a staff photographer for Technician one of the years I was an EIC.

She and Rhett McLaughlin (of Rhett and Link) were literally at Technician at the same time.

What a crazy world!

4/7/2026 2:35:44 PM

this shit got me buggin’ fr

4/9/2026 10:46:18 PM

On cnn they kept talking about a heat shield issue that the astronauts had to sign off on...where did that come from? Or making a mountain out of a molehill?

Said coming in faster so less time on heat shield, but hotter. and in a way where heat is disipated on the shield, versus slower and lower temp, and all heat on one spot

4/9/2026 11:01:30 PM

It came from observations of the heat shield after unmanned Artemis I returned.

4/10/2026 7:03:51 AM

GOT ME SUPA STRESSED, Y'ALL

4/10/2026 11:54:15 AM

Trust the science!

We're not going to make the same mistake 3 times.

Except for Trump voters.

4/10/2026 2:20:33 PM

Everythings good!

4/10/2026 8:07:36 PM

Holy shit that was incredible to watch

4/10/2026 8:12:36 PM

Hopefully no facehuggers on board. . .

4/10/2026 8:13:45 PM

Someone tell Marko he can breathe again

4/10/2026 8:19:24 PM

LOL, we can send folks around the moon and back and we can’t get the damn satellite phone to work while they’re 50 yards from the boat

4/10/2026 8:21:43 PM

Goddamn this is a proud moment for humanity

4/10/2026 9:43:01 PM

Many emotions. Will post more including some more info for StTexan’s question. Huntsville had a huge splashdown party due to all the NASA folks that live here— I was interviewed twice by a reporter for a local news network. I’ll post a link here if they put it online.

4/10/2026 10:47:56 PM

Today is a good day

4/10/2026 11:16:26 PM

https://www.waff.com/2026/04/11/thousands-gather-rocket-city-watch-artemis-ii-splash-down/

Fast forward to about 1:50 to hear my dumb voice (they misspelled my name). I am the one in Wolfpack red. They cut the two interviews down to about 15 seconds of air time, lol.

4/11/2026 12:22:03 AM

Super cool!

4/11/2026 12:26:36 AM

^^
Doxed!

Your accent is in transition after so many years in the southern US.

Well-acquitted, though!

4/11/2026 9:05:10 AM

^its more plateaued at this point, after being in a transition from living in either Charlotte, Raleigh, or Huntsville for the past 33 years. Prob never gonna go fully away, but it gets stronger when I visit the homeland, where they all say I sound American. In truth it places me somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

4/11/2026 10:46:02 AM

Icelandic? Bermudan?

4/11/2026 11:30:27 AM

4/12/2026 3:42:04 AM

Quote :

"On cnn they kept talking about a heat shield issue that the astronauts had to sign off on...where did that come from? Or making a mountain out of a molehill? Said coming in faster so less time on heat shield, but hotter. and in a way where heat is disipated on the shield, versus slower and lower temp, and all heat on one spot"

A1 had an issue where the heatshield got hotter than expected. Not enough to where had astronauts been on board, they would have been in danger, but they were unable to conclusively say that it wasn't too risky to do something about it. There wasn't enough time to completely redesign the heatshield (that + testing + everything else would take years), but they were able to adjust the trajectory to not be as steep. So longer exposure to not as high temperatures vs. short exposure to really high temps. The net energy transfer is overall the same though (think area under the curve fun from calculus 2!). So its like Mike Tyson punching you in the face vs. Mike Tyson holding his fist against your face and just pushing really hard.

All parties involved wanted to make sure the astronauts were cool with it, as obviously they are the ones at risk, so the detailed aerothermal and trajectory analyses were sent to the astronaut office (and likely the astronauts themselves) to review to make sure that they were good with it vs. a redesign of the whole thing.


So anyway. Pretty much a flawless mission from start to finish, excluding some toilet and email issues. Legit one of the smoothest missions I have ever experienced. Most usually have at least a launch delay hold or something on the day of launch, or some kind of minor technical issue that happens in the mission requiring a real-time fix in some capacity. The crew themselves had such a good cohesive relationship too -- you could tell they saw each other as friends as well as coworkers. In a time where there is so much bad news in the world, it is a breath of fresh air to see something so positive actually work out.

4/13/2026 11:44:41 AM

Absolutely astounding. A masterclass in competency and human curiosity.

And it's nice to be able to breathe again. Shoutout to Wraith for being a part of all of this!

[Edited on April 13, 2026 at 1:24 PM. Reason : <3]

4/13/2026 1:23:21 PM

Have any of you said "Thank you" even ONCE to Ed Baldwin for the safe return of these heroes?!

4/13/2026 7:51:33 PM

I wish I could take more credit -- I only worked on the design and development of two very specific parts of the GNC/stability of the SLS. Thousands of people's combined efforts went into this success, so as cliche as it sounds, I gotta say that it really was a team effort.

4/14/2026 10:17:46 AM