The crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission has returned safely to Earth, but if your moon fever hasn’t broken yet, or you’re curious to see a bigger picture of how the second of the planned five moon missions was accomplished, PBS has a new documentary you might want to check out. throughout the hour return to the moon was produced for PBS’s NOVA and aired on TV on April 15, but you can watch the episode in its entirety on YouTube right now.
return to the moon It covers the history of NASA’s Artemis program and in particular the planning and preparation that went into Artemis II. According to the documentary’s official description:
Follow the four members of the Artemis II crew as they embark on a dangerous 10-day journey to orbit the Moon, beyond Earth’s orbit for the first time since Apollo and further into the Solar System than any human before. And get an inside look at the preparations required to overcome the extreme engineering challenges of human-crewed space flight, from launch to splashdown.
The last Apollo mission was in 1972, so Artemis II getting a group of four astronauts anywhere near the Moon naturally generated a lot of excitement. The crew flew further from Earth than anyone else so far, took some stunning photos of both the Moon and our home planet, and managed to make everyone feel better about their dislike of Microsoft Outlook. Few Moon missions have been so well documented or related.
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