In case you are feeling the empty hole of moon missions, void since the return of the Artemis II astronauts from their trip around the lunar far side six months ago, NASA has you covered.
The agency's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket launched Artemis II on April 1, carrying a crew of four on the first mission around the moon since the Apollo program ended in 1972. SLS lifted off from Launch Complex-39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, and, to the awe of hundreds of thousands, climbed a bright blue early evening sky on a trail of smoke left by the vehicle's solid rocket boosters up into space.
More than 300,000 people traveled to the Space Coast to watch the launch from dozens of locations around KSC and surrounding cities. But the best views wouldn't be seen until well after the rocket cleared the pad, when NASA technicians recovered the slew of engineering footage captured by dozens of specialized cameras distributed everywhere from the base of the launch pad to drones positioned in the air to track every detail of the launch. Now, NASA has released that footage to the public.
The newly-released videos include a wide spectrum (literally) of views and angles that follow SLS from just before engine ignition through solid rocket booster separation as the rocket leaves Earth's atmosphere. NASA teams used scientifically calibrated in-flight imaging (SCIFLI) to compile footage ranging from the visible light spectrum, to short-wave infrared (SWIR), near-infrared (NIR), mid-wave infrared (MWIR) and infrared — to give you a few helpful acronyms for context as you pursue these videos on NASA's Artemis II album. These different wavelengths of light captured views imperceivable to the eye and typical camera sensors, and allowed NASA technicians to filter out things like the extreme brightness of the flames from the rocket’s engines.
Artemis II was the first crewed mission of NASA's Artemis program, which aims to establish a permanent base on the surface of the moon in the 2030s. It was also the first flight of NASA's Orion spacecraft with astronauts aboard. Essentially a shakedown cruise for Orion's life support systems, the mission flew NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a 10-day flight around the moon and back to Earth.
The next mission in NASA's lunar line up, Artemis III, will last longer, but won't fly as far. Artemis III is scheduled to launch in mid-2027 with NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik, Frank Rubio and Andrew Douglas, as well as European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Luca Parmitano of Italy. They will launch aboard Orion to Earth orbit, where their spacecraft will rendezvous with the two commercial lunar landers NASA has contracted for the Artemis program, SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon.
Artemis III is expected to last about two weeks as Orion will rendezvous and dock with each lander separately to test the spacecrafts' interoperability. That mission will serve as a precursor to the program's first actual lunar landing with astronauts on Artemis IV, which NASA is targeting to lift off in 2028.
