Keith’s note: The Artemis II mission got off to a slow start. Then it hit the road at warp speed. The novelty of a Moon mission and swelling media coverage all helped to push some of the bad news aside for a few minutes every hour. Real pictures exceeding the best SciFi splashed out on social media and TV. Many people were pleasantly caught by surprise that this was even happening. But soon the crew will be home. And the hoopla will subside – and then quickly disappear. Humanity just mounted its first mission to another world in half a century and we’re already moving on the latest war or scandal. This happened after the first Apollo missions. Are we doomed to see history repeat itself with Artemis? Or can NASA and the broader world community keep this nascent era of interplanetary exploration alive and at the forefront on people’s daily lives – especially the “Artemis Generation”. Follow-through and building momentum is harder than the hardest rocket science. Just sayin’ More to follow.

Keith’s note: The exploration of space holds endless resonances with the exploration of Earth:

• On 6 April 1909 Matthew Henson became the first African American to reach the North Pole.
• On 6 April 2026 Victor Glover became the first African American to reach the Moon

Keith’s note: NASAWatch turns 30 on 1 Apr 2026 (not a joke). It started as “NASA RIFWatch” on 1 Apr 1996 with this post “RIF at NASA In Summer 1997?”. The website was first hosted on a Mac Classic II on a 128 kbps ISDN line in a little condo in Reston, Virginia (see 20 Years Ago Today: The Seeds of NASAWatch). I sincerely doubt there will be many future birthdays for this website – under my editing. Meanwhile Dan Goldin and I have a friendly interaction going over on LinkedIn 😲. Meanwhile, here are a few things from those early days that are still online:

• Rogue Webmasters, Government Executive, 1 Oct 1996
• NASA’s Most Important Asset, Gerry Griffin, 31 December 1996
• Changes in Thinking At NASA November 29, 1996, PBS News Hour

Keith’s 11 Nov 2025 note: 75% – 3/4 of the people on this planet have never seen humans walk on another world. We’re suddenly in a race to go back to the Moon and we are not clearly in the lead. The next time humans walk on the Moon will be the first time this happens as far as most of humanity is concerned. History is just history. Instead of grainy, flickering black and white imagery on a hulking television we’ll all see people bouncing on the Moon in 4K streaming on our cellphones. How does NASA adapt to this paradigm shift? So far, it is not doing that well. More below.

Keith’s note: Recently everyone in the space bubble was jumping up and down about the 100th anniversary of Robert Goddard’s liquid rocket launch. They even held the infamous “Space Prom”. That was last week. For years NASA Goddard employees maintained a display in Building 28 dedicated to Robert Goddard. GSFC management has recently decided to remove this display to make room for a snack bar seemingly without regard for its historical significance. Oh well.

Keith’s note: As best I can collate the facts, on 18 March 1945, 81 years ago today, a V-2 missile was launched from Statenkwartier in The Hague in occupied Netherlands at 9:25 am by Germany’s Battery 485. My father was almost killed when it struck London a few minutes later. My 50 year career was enabled by that V-2. A direct descendant, a Saturn V, designed by the same V-2 team, placed Americans on the Moon. Now, in 2026, we are about to go back to the Moon on the stepchild of a Saturn V while V-2 inspired variants are still being fired by North Korea and Iran. The more things change … Full posting from 2025

Keith’s 29 Jan note: Time magazine revealed its cover dedicated to the Artemis II mission Thursday morning via a press release and tweeted it out at 8:03 am EST. That tweet has gotten over 1 million impressions. Lots of people noticed and retweeted it. But no mention has been made at @NASA. OSTP retweeted it at noon. No mention by OSTP director @mkratsios47 or @NASAAdmin or @NASAArtemis. But PAO staffers Bethany Stevens and George Alderman noticed and retweeted it – so it is not as if NASA PAO was unaware of this. And OSTP tweeted it as well and got ~2,000 impressions (i.e. no one pays much attention to OSTP). But why not use @NASA and its 88.5 million followers? Given that the President really really likes the whole idea of being on the cover of Time magazine, you’d think that this would be a big deal. NASA Is certainly not shy about pumping out its own pre-game PR for the mission. So why ignore this one – especially since it gives free ‘earned visibility’? Those of us old enough to remember Apollo 8 in 1968 will recall the impact it had on the world – the first trip to the Moon. Now we are going back over half a century – the first human Moon mission for 70% of humanity – and an echo of that history has been made. But NASA choses to ignore it. Yet another example of NASA’s baffling way of not making the most of its global branding reach. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

• Friday 30 Jan Update: at 7:28 am EST this morning Jared Isaacman tweeted about this historic resonance. “58 years after Apollo 8’s historic trip around the Moon, NASA is heading back. This time, our crew is going farther into space than any human in history. Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen will embark on a ten-day mission around the Moon, marking America’s grand return to the lunar environment. Artemis II marks the beginning of the boldest series of missions the world has ever seen. Through the Artemis campaign, we will maintain American superiority in space, land American astronauts on the Moon, and establish a lunar base all before the end of 2028. Godspeed Artemis II 🇺🇸”
• And so has ESA Director general Josef Aschbacher : “Artemis is not the story of one nation alone – Europe plays a central and indispensable role. This is the story of a shared vision and a shared commitment. The European Service Module, developed by @ESA and built by European industry with contributions from 10 ESA Member States, is the powerhouse of NASA’s Orion spacecraft. It provides propulsion, electrical power, water, oxygen, thermal control and the capability to manoeuvre through space – including the critical burns needed to set the astronauts on their journey to the Moon. Quite simply, Orion could not fly without Europe. Europe is proud to stand shoulder to shoulder – and on the shoulders of giants – with its international partners, led by the United States🇺🇸. Together, we are extending humankind’s presence beyond Earth and demonstrating that cooperation remains our most powerful engine for the future.”
• And ESA too: “We’re proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with our international partners in Artemis. Our European Service Module is at the heart of NASA’s Orion spacecraft. Together, we’re extending humankind’s presence in space and demonstrating that multilateral and inclusive cooperation is vital for our future.”

Keith’s note: Last week I posted a quick Photoshop (No A.I.) montage on social media using NASA pics of Artemis II / Apollo 8 crews. Space nerds hammered me online because Apollo 8 orbited the Moon and Artemis II won’t. Duh. They miss the point.

• Apollo 8 was humanity’s first visit to the Moon in 1968 which was a very bad year.
• Artemis II will be humanity’s first return to lunar space in 2026 in half a century which could also (probably) be a very bad year
• 70% of the world alive today have never seen humans visit another world. For them Artemis program will provide their first moon landing. For them, we will be doing the same thing again for the first time.
• Waiting to see how NASA PAO dials up the actual launch coverage for #Artemis and whether its more pro-Administration Rah Rah – or a real chance to look at past, present and future history – in a cogent, dare I say it – hopeful – perspective. AdAstra y’all.

Keith’s note: Back in 2004 my late co-author Frank Siezten and I wrote a book “New Moon Rising” about the Vision for Space Exploration that was developed after the loss of Columbia. Frank left us too – a few years back he became the first space journalist to have his ashes sent into space – on a SpaceX rocket (Frank was their first Washington, DC employee). A few years later I found myself on the Board of Directors of the Challenger Center for Space Science Education. At one point I spoke at the dedication of the Columbia Center now located on the old Rockwell International Downey, CA site where space shuttles were built – and I walked past them (and stood inside several) every day. I spoke at point in the building which was once a parking lot where I parked my car. I will be at Arlington on Thursday as I have for the past 3 decades. This is from the epilog from our book: “NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe’s remarks were brief, intense, and below the surface emotional. At the end, he pointed toward the future. “Generations from now, when the reach of human civilization is extended throughout the solar system, people will still come to this place to learn about and pay their respects to our heroic Columbia astronauts. They will look at the astronauts’ memorial and then they will turn their gaze to the skies, their hearts filled with gratitude for these seven brave explorers who helped blaze our trail to the stars.”

Keith’s note: On this day in 1908 Ernest Shackleton and the British Antarctic Expedition arrived at The Bay of Whales in Antarctica. In a few years NASA will be landing another polar expedition at the Moon’s south pole near a crater named “Shackleton”. Its called history folks.

Keith’s note: NASA has been closing its libraries for a long time. Budgetary and building issues are usually the prime reason. Usually, stuff gets moved around and put in storage for years until the storage costs mount and then a portion ends up in someone’s library – somewhere – and the rest gets shipped to some generic GSA warehouse – or thrown away. Now it is GSFC’s turn to go through this painful process – not only with their collection but also the NASA HQ library that was moved there when the HQ library was converted to a visitor center. They have assured NASA HQ that nothing valuable will be lost. NASA’s record in this regard is somewhat rocky. More below.

Keith’s 2 Jan 2025 update: I posted this a year ago. We are coming up on the agency’s Remembrance Day observations. We’re about to see humans return to the Moon. NASA has not bothered to update or repost this link. Why airbrush history when you are trying to repeat it? Keith’s original 26 Jan 2025 note: Looks like this DEIA-oriented page at NASA.gov needs to be erased ASAP: “45 Years Ago: NASA Selects 35 New Astronauts On Jan. 16, 1978, NASA announced the selection of 35 new astronauts, the first time in more than eight years that the agency had admitted new astronauts. The selection of the first class of space shuttle astronauts held historic significance not only because of its then-record size but also because, for the first time, the group included women and minorities. Previous astronaut selections in the 1960s consisted of test pilots or scientists, in those days the domain principally of white men.“ Update: I posted this on Sunday morning, 26 January. I checked today – 27 January – and it is gone.  This is what it looked like 2 days before being removed.

Keith’s note: according to this LAist article: “The Columbia Memorial Space Center in Downey held a groundbreaking ceremony Monday for a roughly 40,000-square-foot expansion that will include indoor and outdoor science learning areas and space for special exhibits. The centerpiece of the buildout will include an interactive display of the Inspiration space shuttle mockup, where visitors can go inside the cargo bay.” When I worked at Rockwell Downey in the early 1980s (location of the Columbia Memorial Space Center) I used to climb inside this plywood orbiter mockup (Missing its left wing) in the DEI room at noon to eat lunch. Shh! I was not the only one who did this (you Rockwell alumni know you did too). I also stood inside the aft end of Discovery and Atlantis during assembly in Building 1, past Challenger in Palmdale, and drove around Downey in an old gas scooter with hardware spares of what would eventually become Endeavor one day. There was Apollo junk in the desk I used. Lots of fun by this 20-something space fan. 30 years later when the Columbia Center opened I spoke at the opening ceremony as a member of the Challenger Center for Space Science Education board of directors. The Columbia Center building is located where I used to park my car. Discovery is 15 minutes from my house now (unless Ted Cruz takes it). My friends and things I helped designed flew on all of them. It’s fun when life coming full circle.

Keith’s lament: Apollo missions to the Moon were seen as great feats of exploration by the media. As we try to do that again NASA has clearly lost control of the narrative to tabloid-level stupidity. Since this whole ‘Back to the Moon, Mars, Beyond’ etc. thing was announced 21 years ago we constantly lose our way and get distracted and drag things out faster than we accomplish those things. And now we are going to beat China to the Moon? That’s not gonna happen unless we change the way the government/space industry hive mind does things. Moreover, it will not happen unless NASA gets the population and media on board while all this other crap is going on. Just sayin’

Keith’s note: I just got an update from KeepTheShuttle. OMB wants NASA and the Smithsonian to figure out how to cut Space Shuttle Discovery apart into pieces to move it. As you will recall that option was ruled out when Space Shuttle Endeavour was moved to Los Angeles on the now-defunct 747 carrier and then moved through the streets where utilities were moved and trees were cut down. Every effort was taken to preserve the integrity of this historic space ship. Now Texas Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn are only interested in snagging a tourist attraction – not a precious historic relic that deserves to be preserved – and certainly not chopped up like a leftover exhibit from a state fair and tossed on a flatbed. Full statement below. Update: There was a story on WUSA Channel 9 in DC this afternoon about this including some snark from me. video.

Interplanetary Memorial to Victims of Sept. 11, 2001: “The piece of metal with the American flag on it in this image of a NASA rover on Mars is made of aluminum recovered from the site of the World Trade Center towers in the weeks after their destruction. The piece serves as a cable guard for the rock abrasion tool on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit as well as a memorial to the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. An identical piece is on the twin rover, Opportunity. The rock abrasion tools were built by Honeybee Robotics in lower Manhattan, less than a mile from the site. This image comes from the panoramic camera on Spirit and was taken on Feb. 2, 2004, the 30th Martian day, or sol, of Spirit’s work on Mars.”

Keith’s note: According to a press release from KeepTheShuttle: “the KeepTheShuttle team is pleased to report that the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors just completed a unanimous and bipartisan vote opposing the proposed relocation of the Space Shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian.

Keith’s note: FYI Sean Duffy: NASA pushes out narratives (issued from the White House) about winning the “second space race” to the Moon. OK, that seems like a straight forward story to tell. Having historians and storytellers explain this adventure would be smart. But you really can’t do that when your boss dumps on one of the greatest lunar popular storytellers i.e. Tom Hanks. Read the room. Just sayin’

Keith’s note: I was just on CNN on HBOMax with Jim Sciutto talking about Jim Lovell [Audio] transcript below.