I have a huge and growing list of things to blog about but April really got away from me… how can I not have written already about the Artemis II mission? I was so looking forward to it, I kept an eye on it constantly, and was hugely impressed with some of the imagery they shared. The moon in all its grey and cratered glory. I love it so much.

Love this. Written before the recent Artemis mission but knowing who was going to be taking part and what they’d get up to, it documents the history of space travel with a unique view. You can find many many books detailing how mankind left earth and started travelling to infinity and beyond, but this one focuses in on the humans (and a little bit about the animals) who made it happen. Intriguing ideas like are astronauts completing the experiments, or are they experiment themselves are scattered throughout and it’s just a really neat, well written, interesting book about these special explorers.

It’s just a lovely, warm, funny story about the people fighting to make a dream come true against immense odds - sending those plucky explorers to the moon. There is the fake moon landing stuff but you never really at any point think that’s what happened, even at the end with the cat providing the proof we all needed. It’s a great take on a silly conspiracy, poking a bit of fun but mostly providing a warm and moving story to while away a couple of hours.

My dad shared this post with me - 11 must-see astronomy events in 2025 - which covers great things to look up for, lunar eclipses, shooting stars, and the planets doing all kinds of wonderful things. The post is geared slightly towards a North American audience, so I went looking to see if there was anything similar for UK stargazers. Of course, the Royal Observatory has me covered.

Yesterday, I wrote a very short post about photos of the moon that didn’t have a lot of point to it other than ‘wahey, photos of the moon!’ I realised that previously, I might have just tweeted something like that, but I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Twitter is going through some stuff right now.

The main aim of the Artemis I mission this year was to test out the Orion ship and the SLS rocket in an unmanned capacity, to make sure it would be fit for future missions with humans on board. It succeeded in its testing, but along the way, it also managed to take lots of fantastic pictures - particularly of the moon. I love a moon photo and there are a good few to peruse on the Artemis I collection on Nasa’s image gallery.

It was August when I last wrote about Nasa’s Artemis mission and the ongoing delays of launching. Those delays kept on coming but wahey, the rocket finally lifted off this week and the Artemis Orion craft is finally on its way to the moon. Apparently it will be tomorrow when the ship reaches its closest proximity to the moon, 80 miles, before heading into orbit.

While dreaming up ideas for potential 30 day challenges, I pondered whether thirty days of Lego would be something that could work. I love the sets they do featuring elements from popular culture - a lot of fun and nostalgia all in a handful of plastic bricks. It didn’t take long to drop the idea because have you seen how expensive these sets are? Maybe one day in the future but for now, I had to settle for just browsing the online store.

We live in a world of reduce, reuse, recycle, and that can be difficult even when you’re talking about quite small household objects. It gets even harder when you start thinking about very niche, very complex robots built for a specific purpose. Of course my eye was attracted to this story, about a potential Mars rover that’s ’looking for a new job.’

I’m a fan of the moon. Weird thing to say, I know, but I love that big grey rock up there just minding its own business and inspiring astronauts all over the world to want to step on it. I’ve been ignoring space travel news (other than the fictional For All Mankind style stuff) for a good few years and I guess it feels like an odd time to be getting back into it again, what with the planet we’re actually on burning up quicker and quicker every day - who are we to sink billions in the atmosphere between here and our nearest orbital neighbour?

Nope, nope, nope. Just couldn’t continue with this one. It was poorly made, with all those cheesy one-liners and rubbish intense stares, and all based around the concept that the moon isn’t natural at all but some kind of hollow AI thing. It’s a movie that just feeds love to the conspiracy theorists and this is such a stupid one to go with. Bleurgh. Roland, mate, what’s going on?

I am completely in love with the show For All Mankind. The sheer audacity of the whole thing is wonderful. It’s out there but also somehow grounded in reality. If you’ve not seen it, or read my thoughts on Series 1, the premise is an alternative history where Russia landed on the moon before the US, and everything that follows from that. I read a review of the show that explained how anything that tries to exploit the butterfly effect - small things creating exponential changes - is bound to start slow but gradually pick up speed. That describes the first season perfectly. It took me two attempts to get going with it, but once I did, I adored it.

When I first wrote about For All Mankind, it was out of duty rather than enjoyment really. This was a show about the moon with a sprinkling of feminism and couldn’t have been made more for me if it tried. I talked of how the first episode dragged and the second picked up and by the third I was hooked. Well, I should have sensed the pattern there because every single episode that went by was better than the one before and by the tenth episode, the season finale, I was enthralled. We binge-watched the last three episodes together and I’m glad we did because the [spoiler-alert] cliffhanger with the guy in the airlock was spine-tinglingly good.

I am intensely aware that my recent posts have been all Apple this and Apple that. With Arcade and Books and Oprah and Swift and more, it’s like everything has come out all at the same time. I’m loving the content on Apple TV+ but some of it has been harder work than others. Dickinson was a surefire hit, but For All Mankind took some perseverance. The first episode didn’t grab me at all. This show is an alternative take on the history of the moon landings, whereby instead of the US getting their feet on the lunar surface first, the Russians won the space race.

After my rather foolish admission that I hadn’t necessarily paid much attention to those that went to the moon after the main three, Steven Roy recommended I watch this documentary film on 4OD - In the Shadow of the Moon. I watched, and I learned, and I made notes. I’ve posted the distilled version for Film Watch, but these are the full notes I made along the way - 90 minutes of brilliant space travel stuff, I highly recommend it.