Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

This is Ephemeris for Tuesday, August 18th. Today the Sun will be up for 13 hours and 54 minutes, setting at 8:43, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:50. The Moon, 1 day before first quarter, will set at 11:05 this evening.

Late next year or earlier 2028, NASA will launch the Artemis 3 mission to low earth orbit to test operations between the Orion spacecraft and one or both of the Human Landing Systems destined to take crews to the moon’s surface by 2030. The two landers are the SpaceX Starship HLS and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 2. Neither of the Landers will be operational, that is they may not even be pressurized, though they will need a docking port. However, it will be a test of rendezvous and docking to make sure that the vehicles can operate together. It will also be a test of the new lunar space suit. Artemis 3 will be a flight test similar to Apollo 9, except crews will not board the landers for independent flight testing.

The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EDT, UT – 4 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum