Keith Palmer's Multi-Purpose Journal

Artemis I had launched at an hour not compatible with going to work the next day for me, but with advance forecasts of the splashdown time in hand I was able to tune into the official live stream while the capsule that was all that was left of the rocket launched into the night weeks before was dipping in and out of “re-entry blackout.” It turned out that when it wasn’t blacked out it was able to send video back, and I was able to see the Earth shifting from a near-orbital viewpoint to a merely high-altitude perspective and then see the parachutes opening. The splashdown was well within range of external cameras, although I’d noticed an earlier shot of the deck of the recovery ship where the horizon was bobbing back and forth quite a bit.

It was something just to contemplate Artemis I being out in space, and tempting to suppose the moon feeling a bit closer. At the same time, I’m conscious that Artemis II, which is supposed to have people on board for a different trajectory around the moon, will be a matter of finishing another rocket, but actually landing on the moon will take a lander and a launch vehicle that haven’t been built yet. With the current plans for SpaceX to supply both, I can imagine their completion will encourage the calls to retire the Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule, honourably or otherwise, even before getting to the plans for somebody rich and their invited artists to ride the basis for that lander around the moon.

In keeping track of the flight of Artemis I, I took note of the latest pictures from the cameras mounted outside the capsule catching sight of the Earth and moon close together (with the moon looking bigger than the Earth), but knew it would be leaving its distant retrograde orbit soon for the next leg of its journey. Checking the NASA site today, I saw confirmation that had happened. I’m now awaiting another close pass by the moon on the way back to Earth, which is still over a week away. Along with the sights from outside, I have noticed the capsule is equipped with coloured lighting inside, which might be peculiar for passengers. The Snoopy doll on board shouldn’t care, but I have sorted out it’s on a short leash, which at least lets me use a post icon in a different mood than it’s been stuck with before.

Artemis I spent longer coasting out to the moon than the three days familiar enough from the 1960s, but I supposed this had something to do with the special distant retrograde orbit it’s going to enter and recalled more recent moon probes had taken their own time getting there. During the outward voyage I did catch up on some archived video, and noticed a press conference where someone mentioned the stuffed Snoopy placed in the capsule to float around in free-fall had been spotted but it would take a little while for the picture of that to be released. That kept me checking an online photo album. When a new picture of the capsule interior did show up I managed to spot the orange-suited Snoopy without too much trouble, noting how he didn’t have a bubble helmet on like other pieces of merchandising I’ve seen but wondering if there’d been concern that plastic might break. Then, though, I went back to the previous in-capsule picture and managed to spot the doll in somewhat worse lighting but about the same place.

Just as I was getting to work this morning Artemis ignited its rocket engine on our far side of the moon to begin entering its orbit; I was able to find an official report of its safe emergence from behind the moon. Further reports did happen to mention the Snoopy doll; just as I’d been wondering about the other stuffed figure on board I saw an explanation Shaun the sheep is strapped in.

When I posted about the first pictures from the JWST for the sake of posting something here, I did mention an impression the infrared telescope was too sensitive to be aimed at the large outer planets. Just a few days later, though, I was taking another look at the NASA site and saw an item the telescope had taken pictures of Jupiter, offering different perspectives from the way it’s normally presented but not burning anything out. It’s kind of nice to have an impression corrected so quickly this way.

Although aware another test flight of a space capsule to carry astronauts to the space station was approaching, it was still a surprise to look at the NASA site one day and see the Boeing Starliner had launched and made it to its destination. The last time that had been attempted, something had gone awry and the capsule had returned to Earth without ever managing to dock. A certain number of disparaging comments about “the establishment” followed, and in the time since that first test the Crew Dragon is now carrying (very) deep-pocketed ticket-buyers into space. Even so, for all that SpaceX has accomplished things a part of me remains cautious about becoming “too big a fan,” and seeing an alternative also being coaxed into working is appealing. I made a point of watching streaming coverage of the Starliner capsule parachuting down to the desert, and happened to recall impressions of a rather old book I’d found in my local library when young that had looked ahead to Apollo capsules managing to land in the desert once upon a time, if I’m remembering that right.

While I have been trying to look up “space news” every so often to keep up on a few ongoing things in my mind, an announcement the eighteen hexagonal mirrors of the James Webb Space Telescope had aligned on their target star surprised me when I first saw it in my regular newspaper. I went looking for more information on the sites I know to check, and now I noticed distant galaxies were beginning to appear in the test image too. It will be a few more months before the telescope completes its checkouts, but I suppose that’s something to try and keep an eye on along with the big and the small (regardless of how I’ve also just seen the big, as ever, attract a certain kind of “you can’t do anything right, can you?” criticism).

As “post something every so often” started nudging me harder, I realised I didn’t seem to have any ideas to write about. While I have been working my way through a few things I thought I might comment on, I haven’t finished them yet. Not altogether satisfied with the last few posts I’ve made and remembering how the arid patch that had pushed me to sign up for Tumblr hit in a February, I went so far as to reconsider something I’d watched through an educational channel’s streaming service and dwelt on an unfortunate announcement reminding me of something I’d drifted away from a while ago. At the same time, though, I did get to wondering whether “expressing an opinion about everything taken in” is really that great, even if I might not be quite in a “get led along with ‘likes’ for the sake of selling online ads someone else makes money on” position.

Then, while going to a space news site to see how the checkouts of the James Webb Space Telescope are progressing, I happened to see an item about a search for extraterrestrial intelligence looking at the centre of our galaxy. The search didn’t turn up anything, and so long as that’s the case people will keep worrying about “technological civilizations expiring in short order.” Even so, and acknowledging it would be a foolish thing to let “science fiction” decide everything for actual science, I did happen to think of Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep, where towards the centre of the galaxy thought itself flickers out but “space opera” machinery works further out than we are. (I then thought of Poul Anderson’s earlier Brain Wave, although its “smart zones of space” aren’t in the same configuration.) So far as another predilection of Vinge and others goes (and acknowledging it might just be unproductive wishful thinking), I also got to thinking about “why not speculate about ‘advanced civilizations’ getting to a point where they aren’t detectable from a distance with our current technology?”

When I noted the James Webb Space Telescope’s sunshield had been fully deployed, I knew the mirrors would be unfolded next. While I’d seen the comments the sunshield seemed to provoke more nervousness, there did still seem the chance for unfortunate complications in the following steps. Checking the updates again and again, though, I saw notices that the secondary mirror had moved into place, and then that the six hexagonal mirrors on the sides had swung out three at a time to join the twelve in the middle. That should have the telescope changed from the rectangular package on top of an Ariane 5 rocket to pretty much how it’s supposed to look, although I know the positions of the mirrors are still going to be adjusted and the telescope has to nudge itself up to the Earth-sun Lagrange point. There have been plenty of comments about how the telescope’s thrusters all point in one direction to keep from contaminating the mirrors and it can’t turn the other way or else the mirrors will wind up in sunlight. Still, with thoughts of the black-and-white covering that tore off Skylab during launch (but after the rocket had vanished in the clouds) to be replaced with improvised sunshades now pushed back into the past, I’m left hoping that this time the mirrors have been really proven to have been made right.

After watching my way through “Star Wars Visions” I was intent on returning to my Blu-Ray saga box set. I did, though, pause to take in a Urusei Yatsura movie with the impression I was seeing it alongside the episodes of that series that had been on TV at the time of its premiere; to say more about that will have to wait for my year-end “quarterly review.” As for saying something about the six Star Wars movies I watched again, though, I am a bit conscious of my choices getting squeezed from multiple sides now. It was something to finish the movies just after reading the concluding instalment of matril’s long-running “Star Words” on my reading page, but I do suppose the best I can hope for from other people on that page is polite silence.

As I grappled with all of that and wondered what else I might post about “before too long,” I did happen to see a news item that a rich Japanese man had bought a ticket on a Soyuz launch to the space station. It’s been ten years since I bought my Star Wars Blu-Ray set (and a Blu-Ray player and an HDTV to watch it with), but twenty since this form of commercial spaceflight began. (I did try to allude to it back in a MSTing I wrote.) Maybe that made the news a bit easier to just sort of accept than the other commercial flights this year, although I also fear the relative anonymity of the ticket-buyer might have helped reduce reactions. As for Yusaku Maezawa’s follow-up plans to travel out to the moon, though, I did get to remembering an article in the Smithsonian’s Air & Space magazine about plans to send a Soyuz out that far, reprising the Zond missions of the late 1960s with people on board at last, that just seemed to evaporate in the end.

The morning after scraping together a post that might amount to an empty boast just for the sake of saying something here “before too long,” the preview blurb on Astronomy Picture of the Day had me thinking a launch I’d known was coming up without quite being sure when might have happened. I went to the main NASA site and saw the Lucy space probe had indeed launched for the Trojan asteroids held in the Lagrange points of Jupiter’s orbit (familiar enough points for anyone with a reasonable awareness of Gundam).

Lucy will need years and several gravitational boosts from Earth flybys before it gets up to the first group of Trojan asteroids, so it shouldn’t matter that much that I was a few days late noticing this news. The thought I might have been distracted by the repeated stunt of William Shatner and three other people being rocketed to extreme altitudes last week and missed a chance to say something a bit more significant here might have been a bit of a reproach even so. In pondering this automated mission being sold as “the investigation of ‘space fossils’” and its name coming from the ancient skeleton as something of a distraction from that, I suppose I did confront this “Lucy” not being quite connected to the Apollo 10 call signs “Charlie Brown” and “Snoopy.”