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Drudge Retort: The Other Side of the News
Wednesday, January 07, 2026

The landmark mission, dubbed Artemis II, is on track to lift off as soon as February. The highly anticipated endeavor will mark the first time astronauts have ventured beyond the bounds of near-Earth orbit since the final Apollo mission in 1972. Artemis II will send a group of four astronauts " NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch as well as the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen " on a trip around the moon.

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But returning to deep space after a more than five-decade hiatus is not without its challenges. Although NASA is leaning heavily on the learnings from Apollo, the Artemis missions will pursue far more complex objectives using some novel technologies. As is the case with any mission to space, uncertainties are inevitable. And nothing is guaranteed.

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Another view ...

NASA Opens Artemis II Public Name Submissions
orbitaltoday.com

... NASA is inviting the public to submit names that will fly inside the Orion spacecraft on Artemis II, a crewed mission expected to travel around the Moon and return to Earth.

The agency says names will be stored on an SD card carried aboard Orion. The signup window is open until Jan. 21, 2026, and participants can generate a digital boarding pass after registering.

Names Will Fly Inside Orion

The campaign is part of NASA's long-running "Send Your Name" outreach, which flies public submissions on spacecraft as a payload.

For Artemis II, the SD card will ride inside Orion with the astronaut crew.

NASA says the sign-up process uses a personal identification number to retrieve a boarding pass later, but the PIN cannot be recovered if it is lost. ...


#1 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-01-07 03:57 AM | Reply

... travel around the Moon and return to Earth ...

OK, that prompted me to think about the computer capability of the Apollo missions.

I found this ...

Apollo Guidance Computer
en.wikipedia.org

... The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) was a digital computer produced for the Apollo program that was installed on board each Apollo command module (CM) and Apollo Lunar Module (LM).

The AGC provided computation and electronic interfaces for guidance, navigation, and control of the spacecraft.[3]

The AGC was the first computer based on silicon integrated circuits (ICs).[4][5]

The computer's performance was comparable to the first generation of home computers from the 1970s, such as the Kenbak-1, Apple II, TRS-80, and Commodore PET.[6] At around 2 cubic feet (57 litres) in size, the AGC held 4,100 IC packages.[5] ...


#2 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-01-07 04:04 AM | Reply

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