Artemis II, NASA’s return to lunar space, is expected to be rolled out to the launch pad this month, with a launch planned for February. That seemed like a good time to review my old Artemis I shots, and I found a few that were pretty good.
If you watched the launch of Artemis-1 on a livestream or on NASA TV on cable television, I can assure you it was ten times better to see it in person. Seeing the launch and being able to share it with like-minded people was an experience unto itself, and is something that anyone interested in spaceflight ought to have in their own right at least once.
For Artemis-1, my wife and I were at a viewing spot that pretty much only locals know about, and were closer than pretty much anyone except those on base. We were many miles away, mind you, NASA makes sure that the general public is far away enough to be safe from the rocket should things go catastrophically awry. Still, we were able to see Artemis sitting on its launch pad in the distance, shining like a beacon in the night. Close enough.
The weather was great — thin clouds, the evening typically cool (around 72ºF) for a fall evening in Florida, with light winds and not many biting bugs. There were about one hundred or so other people there, and we all gathered onto a fishing pier that extends out into the Banana River. It was a party-like atmosphere, with people having a good time and in a good mood.
Everyone was keeping up with the launch on Internet streams from their phones, with many tuned into coverage on YouTube from Spaceflight Now. Others had NASA’s stream up, but it was far less popular than SFN because SFN’s commentator was pretty quiet unless he was relaying an announcement. While NASA did a great job with their coverage, it seemed at times that they got carried away with cheerleading and forgot that this was a news story too — something that deserved as much information as possible for those following the events online.
While waiting out a long hold due to lazy thunderstorms that were lingering too close to SLC-41 to safely launch United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V set to carry the US Space Force’s payload designated as USSF-12, I grabbed a few interesting shots from the nearby launch pads.
Three launch pads: on the left in the background, SpaceX is raising a launch tower for Starship. Center, Artemis-1 on its launch pad. Right, in the background, is where SpaceX launches its Falcon-class rockets, including astronauts into Earth orbit.
And then there were two. After SpaceX launched Starlink 4-14 on April 21, 2022, there were “only” two rockets standing on top of their launch pads on the Space Coast.
Artemis-1 won’t launch this time around, instead, it will return to the VAB sometime around April 26, 2022 for repairs to a faulty valve as well as other processing. While it is gone, repairs and upgrades will be made to the ground support equipment on Launch Complex 39-B, and hopefully when the rocket is rolled back out, its Wet Dress Rehearsal will run more smoothly.
Crew-4 is scheduled to launch in the pre-dawn hours on April 27th, 2022. It will head to the International Space Station and deliver four NASA astronauts there to being a six-month stint onboard.
Seen on April 7, Artemis-1 awaits further testing after The SpaceX Axiom-1 mission launches NET April 8th. The day was filled with intermittent rainstorms as a cold front approached and later passed through the Space Coast. As a result, the air was filled with a fine mist, something not atypical on the edge of the shoreline, and that’s where the launchpads are.
The sun sets on Artemis1 and the first night of its Wet Dress Rehearsal begins.
All was quiet at that moment, and it was incredible to watch SLS start to glow brighter and brighter as the darkness fell behind her.
The day was a stormy one, starting with a tornado warning around 830-9am in Cocoa Beach, which is not far at all from Kennedy Space Center and Pad LC-39B. I was not terribly worried, however, because tornadoes almost always track northeast and that meant it would be offshore before it go to the launch pad. Fortunately, the warning was much ado about not very much and there was no damage to speak of at the beaches.
In between storms (it rained again that afternoon and that night as well) SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 carrying Transporter 4 at 12:24:17 local time, and later, after an afternoon of steely-grey skies and more rain, the clouds parted a little bit to put some color in the gloaming as the sun set.
Artemis herself seemed to grow brighter and brighter as the sky turned to black. Much brighter and taller than the Cape Canaveral Lighthouse, the rocket shone like a beacon into the night. It’s clearly visible from all over the Titusville-Cocoa area, especially on bridges or on roads that give a view up the rivers.
Saturn V’s were the same, brightly lit and easy to see from nearly everywhere around town. It was not only a working spacecraft, but also a symbol that never failed to catch the eye. And given that a lot of NASA workers and their associated contractors contributing to the project live here, Artemis is now what the brightly lit Apollo vehicles were: a reminder of what the mission was.
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