I’ve been following the Artemis Program for several years at this point. Launch of Artemis 2 is a big deal since this was NASA’s first manned mission to the moon since Apollo 17 back in 1972. On top of that, most of the people who are alive today weren’t even around during the Apollo Program. The Artemis 2 mission was supposed to launch in February but got postponed by 2 months because of a fuel leak. Luckily that was fixed and the crew went to space on April 1 of all days. The mission was not a manned moon landing because NASA doesn’t have a lunar module that’s currently operational. So the mission itself was similar to Apollo 8 where they did a flyby of the moon before returning to earth. Speaking of which, one of the Apollo 8 astronauts, Frank Borman, was on my dad’s radio show about 20 years ago. Another thing about Artemis 2 is that the crew actually traveled farther from earth compared to any previous crew. The previous record was held by Apollo 13, and it stood there for 56 years. What’s ironic is that the crew of Artemis 2 returned to earth on the day before the 56th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 13. If that’s not enough, the movie Apollo 13 was released in 1995, just 25 years after the real mission. It’s strange how the movie’s release date is closer to the launch date of the actual mission compared to the present day.

Song for This Journal Entry: https://youtu.be/Hi3mrhdc1_k?si=uL2GlRfHuw1YI_2_