2026 April 06 - The Path of Artemis II

0:00Greetings and welcome to the Astronomy Picture of the Day podcast. Today's picture is titled The Path of Artemis II. So what do we see here? Well, here we see a video clip that will run showing an animation of the Artemis II mission. So this will show the actual positions that it will take over the course of its trip from leaving Earth, traveling around the Moon, and then back to Earth again. Now, why isn't it landing on the Moon? Well, that's not what it was designed to do. This is actually a test mission, such as we've done before. And in fact, NASA had Apollo 8 and Apollo 10, which actually went to the Moon as well before Apollo 11, but never landed on the Moon. And there are ways to be able to test out the equipment to see how it's working before the actual landing takes place. So a future Artemis mission in a couple of years is designed to take astronauts back

1:03and land on the Moon once again. Now, let's go ahead and play the video and we'll take a look at it as we go. And we start off seeing the Earth and Moon to get a perspective there. And then we will start moving in just to look at Earth here. And we see the Earth there and Artemis II being launched from Earth. And we can see how it makes an orbit around Earth first. And it will come in close and then head back out. That gives it a little extra energy in its orbit, adjusts the shape of its orbit. And it's now on a path to where the Moon will be when it gets there. In the meantime, we're seeing a number of things here represented, the little lines going through, little streaks, those are particles from the solar wind. And we also see the Earth's magnetosphere in the green there around Earth, which is what causes the aurora. Now as we watch Artemis II and the Moon are getting closer and closer together, and it's not trying to go into orbit around the Moon,

2:05it just kind of loops around the far side of the Moon, makes that little trip and then starts heading back to Earth. So then we'll see the trip as it heads back, coming back toward Earth. Now it's a long distance, it takes a long time, even traveling at the great velocities that Artemis II is doing. So it still takes several days to get to the Moon, loop around it, and then several days to get back. So it's a lot, but it's just a very quick test mission to test out the equipment that is being used here. And then we'll see as Artemis II comes back into Earth's magnetosphere in the green, and then eventually we'll splash down re-entering Earth, and splashing down likely in the Pacific Ocean. Now this is the first time since 1972 that we have gone to the Moon, and also the first time that we have flown a craft with humans on it outside of Earth's magnetosphere.

3:07Now the magnetosphere protects us from charged particles from the Sun, deflecting them, and it also gives us the aurora that we often see. So we will be looking forward to images of the Moon taken by the Artemis II mission over the next day or two, as those are transmitted back to Earth before the astronauts splash down in the Pacific Ocean in a few days from now. So that was our picture of the day, titled The Path of Artemis II. We'll be back again tomorrow for the next picture, previewed to be Horsehead High. So we'll see what that is about tomorrow. And until then, have a great day everyone, and I will see you in class.