Discussion
Artemis II will use laser beams to live-stream 4K moon footage at 260 Mbps — one giant step beyond the S-band radio comms of the Apollo era
vibe42: NASA's rendering of the flyby:https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a005500/a005536/a2_fly...Hope we get to see something like this in 4K !
SoftTalker: > never-before-seen views of “the far side of the Moon“I guess not counting all the prior "views" that have been recorded since the Apollo missions, including Chinese orbiters which (according to Wikipedia) "scanned the entire Moon in unprecedented detail, generating a high definition 3D map that would provide a reference for future soft landings"
brcmthrowaway: How does laser communication work with a moving object with 9DoF?!
sbarre: Apparently with a gimbal and some fast-moving mirrors.https://www.ll.mit.edu/news/lincoln-laboratory-laser-communi...
xattt: Hopefully, the footage is better than the missed pan up at lift-off, and showing spectators at the time of booster separation.I understand funding cuts and all, but this is a once-in-a-generation moment and it’s filmed with no apparent effort whatsoever.
z33b: The camera and simulation footage were a bit of a letdown and something SpaceX does much better. On the other hand NASA launches do evoke a feeling of substance over form where science takes precedence over presentation. For that money however I concur - I expected more. Especially the simulation footage where the lack of brightness made it hard to see the vehicle - they might as well have used KSP for it
ceejayoz: I suspect this is a frequency thing. Early SpaceX broadcasts were pretty rough. NASA just doesn't do launch coverage with the same sort of cadence.Honestly, they should consider outsourcing that bit.
yardie: A reminder that the illegal DOGE took a chainsaw to NASA personnel last year. If you're disappointed that the feed update wasn't as polished as a SpaceX launch it's because the later has an actual communications and marketing department with a budget.
lysace: I seem to remember NASA broadcasts being top notch up until the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.That quality was lost earlier than last year. Not sure exactly when, but it been like this for years now.
firesteelrain: A more accurate claim would be: never-before-seen in real-time at that fidelity from lunar distance.
sentientslug: I really don’t think budget cuts prevented the camera operator from panning up at the right time…
piyh: Crazy that a dude from Iowa and his ragtag group of rocket watchers does a better job with launch coverage than NASA. I can't believe they cut away during booster separation. Absolute shit show.
therouwboat: maybe they should turn back and do it again
ssl-3: This isn't the last run for this rocket, is it? We'll do it again.And when we do it again, maybe we should pay the dude from Iowa (who has made a career out of things like streaming rocket launches on video) to provide his team's shots and editing for the official live feed when launch time comes up.
reaperducer: We've already seen what happens when you allow social media types to infect the government.Let's not foster any more of it.
reaperducer: Crazy that a dude from Iowa and his ragtag group of rocket watchers does a better job with launch coverage than NASA.You may not have noticed, but NASA was also launching an actual rocket at the time. Conducting a livestream and conducting a livestream while launching a rocket to the other side of the moon are hardly equivalent.Absolute shit show.You have a remarkably low threshold for "shit show."
SV_BubbleTime: > NASA launches do evoke a feeling of substance over formFor real?I was rolling my eyes hard at: GC systems go? GC systems go for all for humanity! And then the VERY scripted pre-launch speeches. It’s like everyone there had been taking notes from inspirational hero movies.It’s cool. But let’s not act like going around the moon is the most historic thing ever… since we’ve already done it plenty, right?
snowe2010: They literally played clips from actors in recent moon movies so yes, they definitely were taking notes from movies.
albertzeyer: Is that real-time or sped up? This video is about 1 minute. How much real time does it correspond to?
xattt: [delayed]
herodoturtle: I’ve read elsewhere that the cut-away during booster separation was intentional given the high risk manoeuvre.If something went wrong / explosion etc, then they wouldn’t want to broadcast it.Something to that effect. I’m paraphrasing someone else.
bananaflag: They did that with the Apollo 17 LEM lift-offhttps://www.redsharknews.com/technology-computing/item/2742-...
unregistereddev: Eh, separation of concerns. Given NASA's PR budget, it seems reasonable that they should be able to produce quality launch coverage.The many people involved in safely launching a rocket are not responsible for providing launch coverage, and the people who provide launch coverage are not allowed to interfere with the many people involved in safely launching a rocket. If they're going to do a bad job at one of those jobs I'd much rather they do a bad job at providing launch coverage, but the two are not mutually exclusive.
PaulKeeble: They missed it pulling off the pad, they then had a picture of the plume, the wide shot off the pad was quite a bit too late also, then they missed the separation of the boosters and the upper stage separation.Honestly it looks like they intentionally missed every high risk procedure intentionally and cut back a few seconds after it had succeeded.You don't make this many mistakes one after the other accidentally, its easier to do this right than wrong, cutting to the crowd as booster separation occurs was clearly intentional. I take this as NASA had very little confidence in this launch and was avoiding showing all the moments it could go wrong live.
losteric: That’s so conspiratorial. They could just stream with a slightly delay to interrupt the feed on disaster. I think it’s way more likely they just didn’t have a good broadcasting team.
mrguyorama: Even SpaceX is only okay with their broadcasts. They normalized showing very little data and spending the whole time with talking heads that don't say anything.Go look what the livestream was like for the Mars Curiosity rover, it was fantastic, and that was on a mission taking place 8 minutes away. Their simulation was mostly Demo data for some parts of the mission, but included such things as what part of the control program it was in! It was even a good rendering. I screenshotted it for a desktop background.But the camera quality is so low and I don't get it.It seems like the entire industry has just ignored the lessons of old: "Get someone who does this for a living". They should have connections and partnerships with movie companies who actually know how to run cameras. That shouldn't be expensive nowadays, as that knowledge seems to be cheap enough for Youtube creators.
cloche: Artemis II is expected to be behind the moon for about 30-40 minutes. Around half-way in the video you can see Earth pass behind the moon in about 1-2 seconds. So yes, it's sped up considerably by a factor of around 2000x
yardie: > panning up at the right time…I've watched hours of athlete parents try to track their athlete kid and it's marginally useful at best. Lots of shaky cam even at Pop Warner football speeds. So panning at the right time, with the muscle control to keep the object centered, is harder than you think.If they have a professional videographer on staff working that camera it almost certainly would have never happened. Elon, who was in charge of DOGE, didn't take communications and marketing seriously so I'm almost certain they were one of the first to be let go.
PKop: SpaceX coverage is much better! lol This is such nonsense. How much does a professional videographer cost? It's a rounding error given what they spend. It's just bad planning and decision-making. This is a damn mission to the moon, not little league baseball, why would you ever compare the two?
Cider9986: > "will use laser beams to live-stream 4K moon footage at 260 Mbps..."> "will be used to beam 4K moon footage at up to 260 Mbps."> "Data rates of 260 Mbps can be achieved..."I wonder what size stream will be available to us. The largest I see in general is 70-90 Mbps for a 4k Bluray Remux and that includes lossless audio. I imagine they would want as much data as possible—significantly more than would be visible to the human eye.
