Anyone else staying up to watch tonight's Moon mission launch?

[Nuffpills]

Anyone else staying up to watch the launch to navigate the moon? I didn’t realise until this evening it’s the first launch in 5 decades!

What did you do over Easter? Oh went to the moon for 10 days! Blows my mind tbh

I’m on holiday in the US so just did.

Just been reading the administrator's wiki page. Some people are just built differently. How? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Isaacman

Yes. And will be actually landing on the moon again in 2028.

My son was asking if we can fly out to watch the 2028 launch! 🚀

This wasn’t isn’t just a US mission. The ESM was built by a team of engineers in Europe run by a female British engineer.

It’s a little surreal to see it come to fruition. Years ago I visited the Kennedy Space Center and they had all sorts of models and diagrams and timelines about the Artemis and Orion projects. They drove us out so we could see the massive launch complexes. And now it’s finally here.

There’s live mission footage being streamed on Youtube with commentary of what they’re doing and why if anyone is interested. The camera swaps around but they’re currently showing the outside of the craft as they run through tests. Earlier they were showing the crew at the controls.

Edit: Really impressed at the cameras they’ve got on it. We were just able to watch the next stage separate and drift off.

If you meant to ask me, we're 7 hours behind the UK currently as we've just Sprung Ahead for the time change (for the last time, btw).

My 7 year old fell asleep watching the countdown on his tablet....he was so excited and begged to watch it in bed. I can't wait to show him it when he wakes up 🥹

That's so lovely! He'll have such a fantastic start to the day!

I'm afraid this is wrong. The rocket doesn't go straight up. Once it clears the tower the rocket rolls then it pitches to a more horizontal (but still pointing upwards) attitude. If it went straight up, it would come straight down again once the engines cut off (although it would land in a different place to where it took off due to the rotation of the earth). By the time the engines cut off, Artemis needed to have a horizontal velocity of 17,500 miles per hour in order to stay in orbit. That is the minimum velocity needed for a stable low earth orbit. It gets about 1,000mph from the rotation of the earth, but has to generate the rest itself.

A more detailed explanation can be found at When the Artemis II rocket launches, it won't go straight up. Here's why | BBC Sky at Night Magazine

Thank you, @prh47bridge . I love all this detail 👍.

I was expecting Trump to step in and press the start button. 😁😁.

Oh, he probably wanted to.

Do you know who it is?

Derrol Nail, a commentator for NASA's office of communications. After lift off, commentary was taken over by Gary Jordan, Public Affairs Manager.

Watching it today with DS- because of time and fear they could blow up and ruin his childhood like people a bit older than me who watched it at school!

I’m not one for arguing with strangers in the internet, but it is not wrong.

I am aware the rocket also pitches so that it is horizontal when it reaches orbit. However the movement of the earth has a significant impact on the first minute or so of flight. After 1 minute of flight the rocket will be approx 10km high. The earth will have moved approx 25km. Therefore this significantly impacts the viewing angle.

I'm sorry but you are wrong. There are plenty of authoritative sources in addition to the BBC that explain this.

When the rocket lifts off, it is rotating at the same speed as the earth. It doesn't lose that immediately just because it is no longer in contact with the earth. If it goes straight up, it will remain directly over the launch pad.

And let us suppose for a moment that it did immediately lose its rotational speed. What would happen? The answer is that it would go UPrange, not DOWNrange. The earth spins west to east, so if the earth was rotating under the rocket it would go westwards, over mainland USA. It actually heads eastwards, out over the Atlantic Ocean. It is going the same way the earth is rotating, whereas if it was standing still and the earth was rotating under it, it would be going the opposite way to the earth's rotation. Heading east means it can add its velocity to the earth's rotational speed, helping it to get into orbit, and drop its boosters into the ocean, not onto land.

Artemis starts pitching fairly shortly after clearing the tower, so is around 8 miles downrange (i.e. over the Atlantic) after 1 minute, whereas if it was due to the earth's rotation it would be around 25km uprange. In contrast, Apollo didn't pitch over until later and was only 1 mile downrange after 1 minute. From the ground it looked pretty much like it was going straight up.

The BBC article is correct. The path looks curved because it is curved.

I was a nervous wreck…I remember watching Challenger launch as a child. So glad it went off ok.

There’s amazing SM footage from a United passenger of their view of the launch from the plane, along with commentary from a very excited pilot!

Years back we were nearing Florida on holiday with the kids and the plane pilot said we'd get a view of a Space Shuttle taking off, but our plane was slightly diverted from its usual path for safety so it didn't happen. We were really disappointed.
We did see the huge traffic queue of sightseer traffic returning from Cape Canaveral, however - 40 miles long, 4 lanes wide!

Apollo 13 is great obviously, but First Man with Ryan Gosling was also a movie I really liked, about Neil Armstrong and the first moon landing.

It looks like they should be doing their lap of the moon this evening.

The lunar flyby is on Netflix live at 6pm 🌕🚀 UK time.

(will be on YouTube and NASA channel too!)