To the Moon, Mars and Beyond

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Meet the crew of NASA’s Artemis 1 moon mission: manikins and Snoopy : NPR

While there are many miscellaneous items joining the exciting Artemis I mission, none might be as recognizable as Snoopy the black and white dog created by American cartoonist Charles M. Schulz.

Snoopy is not new to NASA and has been tied to moon missions since 1969 when the lunar module of the Apollo 10 mission was nicknamed Snoopy because of its role in scouting out or “snooping around” a landing site for the Apollo 11 mission.

Schulz also created cartoons of Snoopy on the moon that captured “public excitement about America’s achievements in space” during the Apollo years, according to NASA.

This time though, Snoopy has a mission of his own. Because the Artemis I mission is uncrewed, a plush Snoopy will serve as a zero gravity indicator to show the team on the ground when the spacecraft reaches weightlessness.

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21 thoughts on “To the Moon, Mars and Beyond”

  1. Fun fact:
    The same guy who wrote “Abraham, Martin, and John” also wrote “Snoopy and the Red Baron”

  2. well, maybe

    as of 4:23 this morning

    Artemis I launch day has arrived – CNN

    Kennedy Space Center, Florida (CNN)It’s a day that has been years in the making.
    Launch day has finally arrived for the uncrewed Artemis I mission to liftoff on a journey around the moon. Tune in to NASA’s website and TV channel to watch the final preparations and witness the launch.
    Appearances by celebrities like Jack Black, Chris Evans and Keke Palmer and performances of “The Star-Spangled Banner” by Josh Groban and Herbie Hancock and “America the Beautiful” by The Philadelphia Orchestra and cellist It’s a sight to behold as the 322-foot-tall (98-foot-tall) stack, consisting of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, glows in the early morning darkness at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
    The stack is sitting on historic Launchpad 39B, where Apollo 10 and shuttle missions previously lifted off.
    Weather conditions remain 80% favorable for a launch at the beginning of a window that opens at 8:33 a.m. and closes at 10:33 a.m. ET, according to the latest forecast.
    However, offshore storms with the potential for lightning prevented the team from beginning the fueling process, due to start at midnight, for more than an hour.
    The hold was lifted at 1:13 a.m. ET, and the tanking process began to load the rocket’s core stage with supercold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.
    The team stopped filling the tank with liquid hydrogen twice due to an initial leak as well as a pressure spike, but tanking has resumed. Now, the team will assess if the leak remains and how to address it.
    “Launch controllers saw a spike in the amount of hydrogen that is allowed to leak into the purge can, a housing covering the tail service mast umbilical’s quick disconnect, or mating interface with the rocket,” according to an update shared by NASA officials.
    Engineers are also working to find out what has caused an 11-minute delay in communications between the Orion spacecraft and ground systems. The issue could impact the beginning of terminal count, or the countdown that begins when 10 minutes remain on the clock before liftoff. But engineers feel good about figuring out the issue ahead of the terminal count, according to NASA.
    [continues]

  3. in the meantime, on earth

    Russia-Ukraine war latest updates – The Washington Post

    A “support and assistance mission” from the International Atomic Energy Agency is “on its way” to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine, the head of the organization said Monday, after Russian forces struck perilously close to the plant, according to Ukrainian officials. Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.

    Key Developments

    IAEA inspectors are headed to Zaporizhzhia as a result of complex negotiations involving Russia, Ukraine and the United Nations-linked agency amid rising international concern that  could cause a nuclear accident. IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi tweeted Monday that a mission to Zaporizhzhia would reach the site “later this week.” Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s representative to international organizations in Vienna, said Russia was involved in preparing the mission, state news outlet RIA Novosti reported.
    Kyiv expects the mission to find that Russia is violating “nuclear safety protocols” at the plant, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Monday during a news conference in Stockholm. The Group of Seven’s Non-Proliferation Directors Group welcomed news of the mission and said in a statement that it remains “profoundly concerned by the serious threat the continued control of Ukrainian nuclear facilities by Russian armed forces pose to the safety and security of these facilities.”
    Ukrainian officials reported more strikes around the Zaporizhzhia plant. Ten people were injured Sunday, including four of the plant’s workers, in shelling that hit the city of Enerhodar, where the facility is located and many of its workers live, according to Energoatom, the Ukrainian state nuclear power company. Shelling on Sunday in Nikopol, across the Dnieper River from the plant, left at least one dead, five injured and more than 2,600 families without electricity, according to the Dnipropetrovsk region’s governor, Valentyn Reznichenko.

  5. https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/28/americas/brazil-indigenous-man-in-the-hole-death-intl-hnk/index.html

    “Last member of indigenous tribe dies in Brazil after resisting contact for decades”

    “Known as the “Man of the Hole,” he had lived in complete isolation for the past 26 years on the Tanaru indigenous land, deep in the Brazilian Amazon…”

    “Survival International said the rest of his tribe was wiped out by several attacks since the 1970s, mainly from cattle ranchers and land grabbers.”

    “For this was indeed a genocide — the deliberate wiping out of an entire people by cattle ranchers hungry for land and wealth.”

    “The man’s body was found lying in a hammock in a hut by Funai officials on August 23. There were no signs of struggle, violence or the presence of other people in the area.”

  6. Interesting but mostly useless information.  Remember high school chemistry?  Hydrogen, Helium . . . Oxygen. . . and more.  H is one atom one elctron, He is bigger and Oxygen is huge.  Due to the need for a really big boom to lift the rocket and payload hydrogen is used with other stuff.  Hydrogen is very tiny and is an escape artist.  Connections need to be very tight with no holes large enough to let the atom escape and cause a boom where it is not wanted.
     
    Oil companies use Hydrogen as a tool to ensure fittings in plants and pipelines are tight.  If the section holds the H then it is safe to use for oil and gas.

  9. Technology giveth and technology taketh away Department.  
    Tech has put a telephone in your pocket. Tech has made it impossible to reach a human when you use it to call a business or a service.

  10. BiD, thanks for the head’s up on the Covid tests.  After the last 2 weeks I’m fresh out – placed my order. 

    So Artemis is scrubbed due to “engine issues”.  Scrubbing a launch for weather wouldn’t give me too much concern, but if I’m an astronaut (I’m not) I’d probably be concerned about scrubbing it for engine issues.  Of course Snoopy probably wouldn’t, I bet engine issues were a constant problem with Sopwith Camels.  BTW, aside from being a world famous flying ace turned world famous astronaut, Snoopy is a beagle.

  11. Today from NOAA’s National Hurricane website.
    ” There are no tropical cyclones in the Atlantic at this time. ”

    Such was not the case in 2005 for today is the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall.
    From the library of congress
    “And you remember, uh, even after we couldn’t pump no more. I thought I was dreamin’ for awhile. I thought I saw bodies—dead bodies—in—in the water—”
    “Yeah.”
    “—and floatin’.”
    “I don’t b’lieve that was no dream. And you know what? It’s gon’ linger with us, it’s gon’ be with us, until the rest of my life i’ gone, y’know, it gonna linger, it gonna be there with me.”
    Rufus Burkhalter and Bobby BrownExternal, New Orleans Pump Station operators, in conversation remembering Hurricane Katrina. Audio recording by StoryCorpsExternal, archived at the American Folklife
     

  12. BTW, Katrina was the 11th named storm that year, so far this year we have had only three. The last one was a storm that hit Sturge’s neighborhood July 3rd. It look’s to be a very quiet August.
     
    Jack

  13. From “the more I know him the better I like him ” file
    An essay by Mayor Pete, now Secretary Pete and his spouse, Chasten.
    Would vote for him as President Pete.

    Parenting is lots of things, and one of those things is terror. You watch your infant, sedated and surrounded by wires and tubes and monitors and medical personnel coming and going constantly, and wonder how we could live in a universe where a few weeks could be all that a child gets on this earth. (In one dark moment, I wondered if my weeks of parental leave would amount to the entirety of my time with our son, this beautiful infant whose face I had seen for the first time just weeks earlier and whose life had now come to matter to me as much as my own.) I prayed. I looked for meaning in tiny fluctuations in the vital signs on the monitors. I thought of my father, whose last days played out on a ventilator in an ICU room like this as he lost his battle with lung cancer, though Chasten repeatedly reminded me that this was a completely different situation. We tried not to hassle the medical staff with our million questions which were really just one question. And they patiently repeated the one honest answer, which was that with this kind of virus, the only way you know it’s getting better is when it’s stopped getting worse. . 

  14. A judge in Texas rules 18 year-olds deserve handguns and in Indiana, a Dutch military trainee is killed by civilian gunfire
     
    i’ll say it for the millionth time- the 2nd Amendment affords no right to factory-made, rimmed, high-powered ammunition.  Didn’t exist in 1791, wasn’t invented until 1845.

  15. The explosion factor of hydrogen is one of the big hold backs to those being in use.
     
    This is when I joined American Red Cross Disaster Services.  Working with the people who had been in the disaster of that hurricane was very intense.  Many times I had someone in our team up and quit within twenty minutes of their first day, usually after their first or second client.  There are many reasons why Katrina was so devastating, One that is important is it affected every class of society.  Of course the poor of New Orleans. But due to how large the impact zone everybody was affected.  It was common to talk to people who had a family member, often one they were with during the evacuation to have died, often by being washed away.  That year also had Rita hit the west side, Louisiana and Texas, then Wilma hit the east side, Florida, of the impact zones.  I processed Katrina clients up to 2019.
     
    When disaster strikes, people with money get out and stay somewhere, they have insurance.  Poor people often cannot leave, and no insurance.  They are who end up in the shelters.  But, the Red Cross shelters are always open for all, we are like an international zone, we do not check on immigration status.  I do not allow police into the shelters as a manager.  If there is an issue for police I bring them in, but otherwise it is no go,

  18. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/want-buy-canned-whipped-cream-new-york-state-dont-forget-id-rcna45280

    “A little-known state law banning sales of cartridges used in cans of whipped cream to those under 21 has only recently been noticed — and enforced …”

    “The age limit was enacted nine months ago to curb teens’ possible abuse of nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas. The nitrous oxide found in whipped cream canisters, when it is abused as a narcotic, is commonly referred to as “whippits” or “whip-its.”

    “It’s actually the cartridge or charger” that’s being banned from sale to young people, Addabbo said Monday. “It’s a small 2-inch charger or cartridge. Those are the words in the bill.”

  20. So I’m looking around for something to watch since Trevor isn’t around and I think I may have found it. The description:
    Grindhouse Presents: Planet Terror. A one-legged go-go dancer and her ex-lover join forces with other survivors to battle a horde of flesh-eating zombies invading their Texas town. (2007, Horror) 
    Horror?  Only if you can get past the comedic description of the film.

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