NASA’s moon mission is a complete failure, and a complete embarrassment

NASA is about to accomplish one of the most significant achievements in human history. This week, four humans went further into space than ever before as part of a lunar flyby. This is the first time mankind has attempted to reach the moon since the end of the Apollo program more than fifty years ago.

And it’s a complete failure.

Astronauts got there and will probably come back, and that’s great, but the bigger goal of doing something like this is to get people to care enough about it so they’ll do more. They didn’t do that at all. Too bad they didn’t seem to try. Everything NASA did was completely wrong.

Branding the mission as a prank

First, they started the mission on April 1st. For you non-Americans, that’s April Fool’s Day, a holiday dedicated to pulling pranks. This went down well with all the flat-earthers out there, and only strengthened suspicions that the moon missions were fake.

That NASA may have started on April 2nd, but purposely chose April Fools’ Day, presumably to get rid of everyone in charge of the agency. However, that was only the beginning of their epic string of failures.

It’s 2026 and we still can’t take pictures in space

Next, as always seems to be the case, NASA’s talented team has been unable to find a way to send any decent cameras on the Artemis II mission. Or if they did, they weren’t used.

The astronauts had their iPhones, which was a good idea, so presumably they pointed them out the window and tweeted the result. If they did, NASA chose not to highlight most of their pictures. You won’t see many astronaut selfies going viral.

Instead of an endless stream of beautiful videos and photos of our planet when Orion left, NASA has released three images that their crew took from Earth.

The photo is one (above) of the Sahara desert, where no one lives. Also, it is reversed from our usual orientation. NASA could have easily turned it around, but didn’t.

Photo two (above) is of the Australian outback, where nobody lives.

Photo three (above) is of Earth in darkness, filtered so that even the city lights are not visible. As a result, it looks like a dark circle with a sliver of light. In other words, it looks like something.

You can’t see your house from there

Then there was the lunar approach, where we saw a vague gray shape. Astronauts claim the stars are impressive from their windows, but no one has figured out how to photograph them. And then the capsule passed the moon and was returning to earth, showing us nothing.

Now the mission is on its way home, showing the void to the people of Earth. An empty space, an empty desert, an empty gray circle of dust. There isn’t even an image we can point to and say: I can see my house from here!

The astronauts gave some awkward, pre-scripted speeches that they didn’t even write themselves. It’s not their fault; It’s not their job to make it interesting.

NASA will mumble excuses about why they can’t get any good pictures anymore, and then throw in some technical jargon about why the mission was important to science, no matter how boring it seemed. They’ll say it’s important because it sets up future missions. Of course, those missions will also be unable to do basic photography and social media marketing.

The main value of space travel is what it teaches us about ourselves

Unlike the age of sailing exploration, in which brave men traveled great distances in ships and returned with gold and exotic fruits as proof of the value of their journeys, space travel has no real, tangible benefits that most people give it credit for. Its main value to humanity is what it can teach us about ourselves.

When NASA can’t even show people a picture of North America, the continent that paid for its missions, it abandoned its real reason for existence.

NASA just made every child a place to hate

I tried to tune in with my 9-year-old son, who was excited about space travel. We watched a rocket launch, which was badly filmed. He tried to be excited about it, but it was only a two second fire. Then the camera malfunctioned and cut out. It came back to extreme close-up, and then the rocket was gone.

Later it was difficult to separate the space footage and make it out. Well, when SpaceX does a launch like this, their videos of the rocket are always vintage and beautiful. You see it all. Somehow, despite billions of tax dollars, that’s not something that can be accomplished by NASA.

When the mission landed on the moon a few days later, we watched the flyby live feed, which consisted mainly of two women sitting in front of a camera spinning word salad and occasionally explaining why we couldn’t see anything. When Orion came around the dark side of the moon and came back into contact with Earth, we still saw nothing. With nothing to watch, we had to sit in the middle of a crew member reading a boring, pompous, pre-prepared speech.

I tried to spice it up by showing my son images from NASA’s X Feed. Except, well, there were only those three images. Also, there was a video of some floating Nutella, which was almost certainly a paid, space-faring native ad.

Soon, we went back to the NASA live feed, still showing nothing. We had been watching for about an hour now and, after a few minutes, my son asked: “Can we turn it off, Dad? There’s nothing to watch. I’d rather read a book.” That was the end of his interest in the space program.

The only interesting footage of the entire effort was a clip salvaged from the mess and shared on X by Elon Musk, who seems to understand the assignment even if NASA doesn’t. Here it is…

NASA should be the first to clip this footage and share it on social media. This should be a priority for their marketing team. It wasn’t. Maybe they already do. By the way, most of the comments left on it are from people who think the footage is fake, since NASA launched the mission on April 1st.

If we sat through another half hour of nothing, my formerly space-obsessed child might have seen footage of Elon Musk’s video on NASA’s live feed. But he’s a 9-year-old boy with an energetic mind, not a bedridden geriatric with nothing to do but watch NASA’s version. between two ferns.

Thanks, NASA. It looks like a complete failure. At least my son has books to fuel his imagination.