Must be that I'm too much of a space nerd.
Space.com posted a schedule of what would be seen during the day, and here's an attempt to copy it. I sat down to watch a bit before the 1:56 PM (red) line and as I'm typing it's 9:40 PM and this schedule says the livestream is about to end.
Time (in EDT / GMT) |
Event |
What to know |
|---|---|---|
10:50 a.m. EDT / 1450 GMT |
Artemis 2 crew wakes up |
This begins Flight Day 6. Flyby day. NASA will play the crew a song. |
1:00 p.m. EDT / 1700 GMT |
NASA's main livestream begins |
This is a special broadcast. The 24/7 feed will transition to this. |
1:56 p.m. EDT / 1756 GMT |
Artemis 2 surpasses Apollo 13 distance record |
The Orion ship will fly farther than Apollo 13, going beyond 248,655 miles from Earth. |
2:10 p.m. EDT / 1810 GMT |
Artemis 2 crew comments on beating Apollo 13 record |
The Artemis 2 crew will comment on their new record, but we'll get audio only. |
2:15 p.m. EDT / 1815 GMT |
Orion cabin configured for flyby |
The astronauts will darken the cabin lights and prep cameras and other gear. |
2:45 p.m. EDT / 1845 GMT |
Seven-hour moon flyby observation period begins |
The Artemis 2 crew will observe both near and far sides of the moon. The main phase lasts five hours. |
4:35 p.m. EDT / 2035 GMT |
Interior views of Orion |
NASA will show inside views of Orion during the flyby. |
Ongoing. |
Observations continue. |
The crew has 35 targets for 10 science objectives. They may see the Apollo 14 and Apollo 12 landing sites. |
6:44 p.m. EDT / 2244 GMT |
Loss of signal |
NASA will temporarily lose contact with Artemis 2. It should last 40 minutes. |
7:02 p.m. EDT / 2307 GMT |
Artemis 2 closest to moon |
Orion will be about 4,070 miles above the moon at closest approach. |
7:07 p.m. EDT / 2307 GMT |
Artemis 2 reaches its farthest point from Earth |
Orion will be at its farthest from Earth, at about 252,760 miles away. |
7:25 p.m. EDT / 2325 GMT |
Reacquisition of signal |
Mission Control should reacquire signal with Artemis 2. |
8:35 p.m. EDT / 0035 GMT on April 7 |
Artemis 2 sees solar eclipse |
The astronauts will see the moon block the sun in a total solar eclipse. It will last 53 minutes. They may also observe Mars, Mercury, Venus and Saturn. |
9:20 p.m. EDT / 0120 GMT on April 7 |
Artemis 2 lunar flyby observation period ends |
The flyby observing period ends. The crew begins sending some imagery to Earth. |
9:32 p.m. EDT / 0132 GMT April 7 |
Solar eclipse period ends |
The Artemis 2 crew finishes observing the sun's corona and planets. |
9:45 p.m. EDT / 0145 GMT April 7 |
NASA's Moon Flyby Livestream ends |
NASA's special Artemis 2 moon flyby commentary ends, but 24/7 mission coverage continues |
The day was filled with video highlights and incredible sights. Along with hours of nothing like those highlights. Along the way, I grabbed this picture that's one of the more incredible sights of the night.
The captured video scene is slightly stretched left to right, but along the right side you see a tiny bright crescent next to much larger, but less well-lit, grayish-brown crescent. The big crescent is the moon; the small one is Earth. The Earth is starting to be occulted (the astronomical term when one object blocks out one farther behind it) by the crescent moon.
There has been a lot of talk about the astronauts on this mission seeing things no astronaut has seen since 1972, or ever before, but a couple of things here - like this photo - have never been seen by any human at all. I'm sure it could have been seen if prior moon missions were timed exactly right, and I'm equally sure nobody scheduling those moon landing missions would have thought of this. Seeing this is a sign of the beginning of the age of a space-faring civilization.
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