{"id":59659,"date":"2026-04-02T00:03:51","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T00:03:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=59659"},"modified":"2026-04-02T00:03:51","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T00:03:51","slug":"fly-artemis-fly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=59659","title":{"rendered":"Fly, Artemis, fly!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n\r\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">Allow me this brief admission, which is that today for the first time in decades my eyes filled with tears of joy as I watched the Artemis II rocket fly into space en route to the moon.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Watching the rocket blast off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., reminded me of the many mornings I would watch and wait for Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts fly into history. Mom and I would do so together and we cried together too.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>When was the most recent time I cried at the launch of a spaceship? I believe it was the 1998 launch of the shuttle Discovery as it contained, in the words of NASA&#8217;s announcement upon launch, a crew featuring &#8220;<em>six astronaut heroes and one American legend.&#8221;<\/em> The legend happened to be John Glenn, who was making his second flight into space 36 years after orbiting three times aboard his Mercury capsule.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>We have once more seen American ingenuity score a huge triumph with the successful launch of the Artemis II rocket. We have returned to the effort of putting astronauts on a deep space target. The moon awaits. The Artemis II crew will visit the moon up close, orbiting the celestial body and coming home. Eventually, we&#8217;ll head for Mars &#8230; what happens next remains anyone&#8217;s guess.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>I am thrilled to watch this effort unfold. Today, we took a relative baby step as Artemis II roared off the launch pad as it writes another chapter in our nation&#8217;s rich scientific history.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Godspeed, Artemis II crew!<\/p>\r\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Allow me this brief admission, which is that today for the first time in decades my eyes filled with tears of joy as I watched the Artemis II rocket fly into space en route to the moon. Watching the rocket blast off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., reminded me of the many mornings I would watch &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=59659\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Fly, Artemis, fly!<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8386],"tags":[10544,2533,3182,6724],"class_list":["post-59659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-news","tag-artemis-ii","tag-john-glenn","tag-nasa","tag-space-flight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59659"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59661,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59659\/revisions\/59661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}