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> 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

> 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"

firesteelrain 7mo ago
A more accurate claim would be: never-before-seen in real-time at that fidelity from lunar distance.
- SV_BubbleTime 7mo ago
  Real time has to be about the most useless factor here. I don’t care if it’s a year delayed, it’s not like I was going to head up there myself.
  - wang_li 7mo ago
    >...it’s not like I was going to head up there myself. You're never going to be able to IPO your space startup with that attitude.
  - ErroneousBosh 7mo ago
    It's not even going to be real time anyway, it's delayed a bit less than a couple of seconds ;-)
- venusenvy47 7mo ago
  The article talks about the normal blackout window of 40 minutes on the far side. I'm confused about how they will get real time footage from that side. Is there a lunar relay satellite that wasn't mentioned?
fxtentacle 7mo ago
Those were transmitted offline so they didn't have authentic NVENC H264 compression artifacts. Never before have you seen it with 260 Mbps ;) /s
procflora 7mo ago
This article is plagued by several almost-truths, and gets a lot mixed up. The thing that is happening for the first time on this mission is humans personally observing much of the far side in daylight. For the Apollo missions the far side was mostly dark because they wanted a high sun angle at the landing site on the near side. Many uncrewed orbiting cameras and even a recent Chinese lander & rover have taken photos of the far side. It also states that these will be images "from the surface" of the Moon which is wildly off base. Artemis II is not landing... Of course it's true that this O2O technology could be used for high bandwidth livestreams from the surface on future missions, if this test works well. I don't even think this O2O system will be used for live video during Artemis II. This and several other similar articles all appear to reference a NASA press release that is about the technology in general. The mission-specific NASA reference I found[1] says they will transmit a pre-recorded video "in the lunar vicinity" at 4k using the O2O system, so I would guess this claim of a "livestream" is just misstated. [1]: https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/a2-reference-guide-012825.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/a2-reference...
- dotancohen 7mo ago
  But Artemis II launched during passover - so a day before the full moon. That means that for a 10 day mission, the flyby will be four days after the full moon. And the flyby is necessarily on the far side of the moon, that's how physics works. So they'll be passing over the far side of the moon four days after a full moon - the far side of the moon will be in almost complete darkness. Not even Earthshine lights the dark side of the moon when it is full.
  - procflora 7mo ago
    My understanding is that even that small amount is more than the Apollo crews had. It's all a bit of a marketing line anyway. We can see a good portion of the "far side" from Earth due to the Moon's libration. Still, it's true that parts of the far side are still unseen by human eyes (if you consider pitch black landscape to be "unseen" which I think is fair given the lack of any significant illumination as you point out).

firesteelrain 7mo ago

A more accurate claim would be: never-before-seen in real-time at that fidelity from lunar distance.

SV_BubbleTime 7mo ago
Real time has to be about the most useless factor here. I don’t care if it’s a year delayed, it’s not like I was going to head up there myself.
- wang_li 7mo ago
  >...it’s not like I was going to head up there myself. You're never going to be able to IPO your space startup with that attitude.
- ErroneousBosh 7mo ago
  It's not even going to be real time anyway, it's delayed a bit less than a couple of seconds ;-)
venusenvy47 7mo ago
The article talks about the normal blackout window of 40 minutes on the far side. I'm confused about how they will get real time footage from that side. Is there a lunar relay satellite that wasn't mentioned?

fxtentacle 7mo ago

Those were transmitted offline so they didn't have authentic NVENC H264 compression artifacts. Never before have you seen it with 260 Mbps ;) /s

procflora 7mo ago

This article is plagued by several almost-truths, and gets a lot mixed up. The thing that is happening for the first time on this mission is humans personally observing much of the far side in daylight. For the Apollo missions the far side was mostly dark because they wanted a high sun angle at the landing site on the near side. Many uncrewed orbiting cameras and even a recent Chinese lander & rover have taken photos of the far side. It also states that these will be images "from the surface" of the Moon which is wildly off base. Artemis II is not landing... Of course it's true that this O2O technology could be used for high bandwidth livestreams from the surface on future missions, if this test works well. I don't even think this O2O system will be used for live video during Artemis II. This and several other similar articles all appear to reference a NASA press release that is about the technology in general. The mission-specific NASA reference I found[1] says they will transmit a pre-recorded video "in the lunar vicinity" at 4k using the O2O system, so I would guess this claim of a "livestream" is just misstated. [1]: https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/a2-reference-guide-012825.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/a2-reference...

dotancohen 7mo ago
But Artemis II launched during passover - so a day before the full moon. That means that for a 10 day mission, the flyby will be four days after the full moon. And the flyby is necessarily on the far side of the moon, that's how physics works. So they'll be passing over the far side of the moon four days after a full moon - the far side of the moon will be in almost complete darkness. Not even Earthshine lights the dark side of the moon when it is full.
- procflora 7mo ago
  My understanding is that even that small amount is more than the Apollo crews had. It's all a bit of a marketing line anyway. We can see a good portion of the "far side" from Earth due to the Moon's libration. Still, it's true that parts of the far side are still unseen by human eyes (if you consider pitch black landscape to be "unseen" which I think is fair given the lack of any significant illumination as you point out).