Coffee With Lunar Flyby and Splashdown
If you were having coffee with me, I would welcome you to my tangle of words, feel at home. The kettle is boiling, the tea is brewing and the coffee is instant, hope that’s ok.
Unless you live under a rock, you must know by now that we just came back from a historic trip around the moon… Who is we?… you might ask, well that’s Commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, Jeremy Hansen and me, well at least my name, which was on a NASA memory card that was in the Orion.
For those who missed the memo, it was a lunar flyby, which is a fancy way of saying they took the scenic route into deep space to loop around the moon and come back; they did not land. A follow-up question might be, whats so special about this if Apollo missions achieved this already? Landing on the moon 6 out of 7 between 1969 and 1972.
As a politician would answer, it’s a very good question. For starters, its been 50 years and technology has evolved greatly beyond then, with advanced spacecrafts, and systems designed for sustainable lunar exploration, not just short-term landings. While the Artemis I mission had already shown that it was possible, the Orion spacecraft’s life-support, navigation, and communication systems needed to be proven in deep space before attempting landings.
Orion reached 252,756 miles (406771km) from Earth, surpassing Apollo 13’s record of going 248,655 miles. They also captured never-before-seen footage of the far side of the moon, and in a touching gesture, named a crater after Commander Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll and another after their nickname for their spaceship, Integrity.
After a successful lunar flyby, which included a tense 40 minutes of radio silence while the crew was behind the moon, and witnessing a total solar Eclipse from space, they completed their gravity-assist manoeuvre, which would bring them back home without the need for additional propulsion, except for minor course adjustment.
The scariest part of the mission was the six minutes of re-entry, where the spacecraft would be hurtling at speeds of 25 000mph encircled with plasma, which would make communication impossible. The Artemis I had received considerable damage to its heat shield and though they kept the same heat shield, they angled the return trajectory to favour a steeper, more direct descent, spending less time at peak temperatures.
The Orion splashed down successfully on 11 April Friday 2:07am CAT and my virtual passport has a new passport stamp in it.. even if my real one is in a drawer gathering dust.
If you were having coffee with you might wonder why I was so invested in the Artemis II mission. Well, I have always been fascinated by the moon and since I couldn’t be an astronaut, I became a poet instead, howling at the moon I could only point at but never touch.
Also, there isn’t much to look forward to besides taxes, fuel prices increases, and constitutional amendments… The Digital services withholding tax of 15.5% has been making online payments effectively cost 20% when you factor in bank charges.
And then there is fuel, which has gone up countless times in the past month because of the Strait of Hormuz business which has pushed up the price of brent crude. Our government says we must be grateful that instead of kicking us while we are down, they gave a love tap and prices aren’t increasing as much as they should… erm geez, thanks I guess?
Meanwhile, if you are having coffee with me, I would tell you about the constitutional amendment bill that is on course to being approved, which will see presidential term limits being increased. I am pretty sure there was a clause in the Constitution that things like term changes were never supposed to benefit the current holders of power and that any such changes would need a referendum.
But its all sorted because the government says it isn’t changing anything from the three constitutional chapters which would trigger a referendum and having concluded public meetings any other comments and ideas can be send via email…
Whats been going on your neck of the woods?
~B
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