Apparently, the apogee will be on April 6th (calculator). So something like 405000 km, plus the swing from the free-return trajectory which (Mistral tells me) will take them 7600 km beyond the Moon.
Thanks for the data! So they were not lying? Color me surprised.
The real question is, which of the four astronauts will be farthest from Earth when the ship reaches that point? I wonder if they will be fighting for that seat.
As this will happen during the famous forty minute communication breakdown there will not only be a nice whodunnit opportunity but also great 0G slapstick without the interference of the party spoilering ground controllers. I hope the cameras register all that and put it in YouTube to the tune of Yakety Sax.
Finally getting some in-cabin video. I heard the CapCom mention the crew is scheduled to take some time to talk to (at?) the viewing public. (After they cut the public feed for some private family communication.)
Instead of that, I think all we have to determine is the distance that Integrity will be when it’s at its farthest point.
It is supposed to happen at 23:09, on 6 Apr., which would make it 413113 km from the Centre of the Earth… (the surface is somewhat closer, of course)
{What are you trying to calculate?}
Is this really going to happen at $4 billion + per rocket?
Except that Antarctic research can be done with off the shelf equipment. We didn’t have to ltierally invent the airplane to get there.
Right about to pass the halfway point between Earth and Moon, now.
Ninja’d by @Velocity, but I was watching for that very moment – with the five-second updates, here’s the halfway point just seconds later:
Orion will continue slowing for quite some time yet, as the point of gravitational equilibrium is obviusly much closer to the moon than to earth. Beyond that point, it will begin accelerating, pulled in by the moon’s gravity.
I was speaking to the discussion on if Artemis II would really become the ship that brought astronauts the farthest from earth.
ETA — no idea why @DPRK ’s question is in italics. It must be the square brackets s/he used.
One of them should hide in the restroom (I’m assuming there are no cameras there). And after resuming comms, the rest should pretend they’ve never heard of the hiding astronaut, and there were only 3 aboard when they left. For added fun, they could ask questions from an alternate history line (Ask whether President Pelosi plans to talk to them later, and other stuff like that).
The astronauts are sending back some gorgeous pictures of Earth.
I wonder how the flat-earthers are hand-waving these away?
It’s Sora images all the way down.
In a cute twist, since Sora is being taken down, they’ll have to take real footage and brand it with a fake Sora watermark.
I’ve seen a number of Facebook posts suggesting that during the 40 minute time when Artemis is out of contact with Earth everyone on Earth should put on ape costumes.
Same way they always did. It was shot on a soundstage. It’s CGI.
I sometimes wonder if you even took one up into orbit if they would be convinced.
Like Kurt Wise, with a Phd in paleontology who said something like : “if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate.”. (From Wikipedia).
Note to mods and everyone else: let’s NOT get off onto a creationism hijack: I just mentioned it as an illustration of how strong preconceptions can be.
From a logistics point of view putting the astronauts in ape costumes is an easier task.
The funny thing would be if both sides do it independently of each other.
[ my inner dialogue]
I wonder if Trump will announce that never in history, integrity been further away from America than during his reign administration…