Its the big day! The one where they go round Luna and see the dark side of the moon (DSOTM) – no doubt Pink Floyd’s iconic album needs to enter the dialogue somehow!

Some might wonder why would London Rail be following the Artemis 2 program? Its because I faithfully followed the Apollo program and was up at the unearthly hour of somewhere around 03.30am, and dashed downstairs to switch the television on, and there was the lunar module’s ladder being streamed live. A short while alter Neil Armstrong came down the ladder and history was made. That was 03.56am on 21st July 1969 UK time. (July 21, 1969, at 02:56 UTC). To this day I continue to follow quite a lot of stuff on space.

Orion has just begun showing pictures of its destination this past few minutes. The moon appears as a very bright disc, however some slight detail can be see at the sides of the disc, which would be large craters or even small mountains. The issue here is trying to show both the craft and the moon and retain dynamic range. Its why the stars don’t get seen either and at times earth has also been seen as a total white disc or crescent.

Its been announced the craft is to be repositioned or reoriented rather to provide better OpCom – or Optical Communications. This according to MSS, enables the transmission of science date, procedures, flight plans, and communications. OpCom is laser based, which means its infra red light instead of radio waves. OpComs allows more data to be sent and that’s essential to the lunar flyby. (Approx noon UK time).

The manoeuvre to increase OpCom appears to have taken place at 03 days, 19hours and 05 minutes or sometime soon after.

A bit more detail on the moon can now be seen. (approx 13.35pm UK time). Occasionally what seem to be small meteorites (assumingly) can also be seen crossing the path of the moon. Actually its particles or space dust. Some do fly quite fast though.

Space is mighty empty but still presents many dangers including meteoroids. The crew of Apollo 13 initially thought they had been hit by a meteoroid. Ironically one of the dangers of space in the future could be us humans!

MCC were just saying the moon is very reflective, its “shiny, shiny”, which is why the images ATM are not good. (That was Lorelei Lohrli-Kirk. Orion Imagery Deputy Lead, saying).

Detail on luna becoming slightly more apparent. 04days 16hours 55minutes.

Just at about this time (04days 17 hours) Orion entered the lunar sphere of influence – meaning the craft is now in the moon’s gravitational field rather than that of earth. The craft is just 17,000 miles from the moon.

At 20.45pm UK time the official lunar flyby begins.

At 007.am UK time on 7th April Integrity reaches the furthest ever point from earth. 252,760 miles and about 4105 miles further than Apollo 13. Here are MCC’s timings below this was shown yesterday too.

Today’s (6th April) and tomorrow (7th April UK time) listings. Add 5 hours for UK.

MCC announced (17.44pm UK time) at 4days 18 hours and 12 minutes Integrity is now just 14,766 miles from the moon.

A short while ago (17.32.pm) the BBC said: “But don’t make the mistake of calling the side we don’t see the dark side. That comes from the name of a 1973 Pink Floyd Album – Dark Side of the Moon. Because this side of the Moon isn’t dark – it gets illuminated by the Sun just like the near side is. And you’ll see that when the Artemis astronauts return their images.”

Well, bad news BBC News! The ‘dark side of the moon’ has been a term used for more than two centuries! Pink Floyd obviously popularised it! Historically it has also been called the ‘dark body of the moon.’

The dark side of the moon. Bath Chronicle 14th March 1839.

In retrospect ‘dark side of the moon’ would have been a more popular choice. Not being able to read or know a person’s mind or intents would often decree they had a dark side even though we could well easily see their face and their expressions. Since no-one really knew the far side of the moon until the 1950s, the correct term would have been dark side (or dark body) and even today its still a correct term because few still know it despite the advent of space missions. Thus in psychological terms, there’s no doubt the moon has a dark side – because it has a face that constantly shows itself to us. So we never get to see, or know, the dark side of the ‘person’ concerned, even though the correct definition ought to be the far side.

At 18.00 UK time NASA began their official live moon flyby coverage.

In a few minutes the crew will have transcended the furthest ever travelled by Apollo 13. This is at 18.56pm UK time.

The furthest record to be set in a few minutes time.

MCC CapCom read out a short statement informing the crew they had achieved the record for the furthest humanity has flown.

Quality of the live stream worsened – just after the record distance set by Orion.

For a few short seconds the image was flipped. Is it an attempt to recalibrate the camera?

I can only hope the image quality will be resolved somewhat soon. Otherwise this mission is going to be a very poor imitation of the Apollo missions. I know they need bandwidth for high quality images but even so the sort of clarity we are getting is piss-poor. NASA banged the drum so much about the exciting images that everyone would see – and all we see is a continual blur!

Am watching it in 4k now and its no difference. MCC however seem to be getting a better picture!

People beginning to get grumpy about the dire quality images being had from the moon.

The following is from Everyday Astronaut:

@JBDwatching
​​I can see the moon sharper from my back yard
@DOcTaZ555
​​This is the worst moon ive seen ever
@Auxius.
​​The image quality sucks lol.. wtf is this, an early nokia bound to their solar arrays? I understand it’s far from Earth, and difficult to transmit data, but come on, it’s 2026
@SeptimMaria
​​These kids want HD footage from 250,000 miles away and they want it NOW!.
@Asmo-RL
​​@MG_Steve this shits not even 480
@thesowl
​​i thought they had a pretty beefy laser connection for data, they could’nt get a better image quality for live videos?

To be honest the whole ting’s sort of descended into what seems like a school outing where the teacher points out everything the kids need to see. That wouldn’t have been so bad had the image quality been decent – but what we’re seeing totally sucks.