Artemis II doesn’t reverse direction. Far out, its motion is mostly radial (toward Earth), so its small eastward speed is slower than Earth’s rotation, so it appears to drift west. Closer in, tangential speed grows and overtakes Earth’s rotation, so it moves east.

That’s a crap animation. Try this instead.

Thanks I was trying to visualize how that would work

It's very similar to why outer planets seemingly go retrograde.

Yeeep. It's really unintuitive seeing the ground tracking path. Here's my take on visualizing what's going on:

I have an interactive version here -

Nice! So does it appear to stop and turn east the moment its speed goes below Earth’s rotation speed?

The moment its tangential speed exceeds Earth's rotation speed.

Nice, thank you! So it’s still speeding up when it takes that apparent turn near Australia. Really cool.

Great breakdown! These orbital perspective shifts are exactly what make live tracking setups so fascinating. Can't wait to capture this in real-time!

This looks so much like the early XCom DOS games.

Hmm this visual makes it look like Artemis is aiming at the center of the Earth first, then turns. Wouldn’t it be aiming at its re-entry point right away? Or is this the skip entry in action?

Thank you for the explanation!

@grok can we see this event from Hawaii? If so, what direction and area of the sky should we look? What time local HST?

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻🇺🇸

Thanks! I was wondering,

Excellent animation. Hopefully that will enable the highly confused to be less so! thanks!!

I finally understand

the point where the tangential speed overtakes earths rotation is where geosynchronous orbit is as well

This makes more sense than what I imagined in my head after looking at the line

Brilliant diagram! I was thinking about this last night, thanks for the clear check!

That explains the funny Oceania “flight path” image I saw posted here on X a few days ago I couldn’t work it out - I actually puzzled over it Now with your explanation and knowing it’s actually called a reentry trajectory, it makes a lot more sense Fascinating

Thanks for this, the map and explanation I first saw was NOT helpful for my small brain lol

The animation makes it looks like it turns. It doesn't turn. From the perspective of the spacecraft it is always pointed at the edge of Earth.

this blow my mind

You borrowed that from @BBCArchive 🤣🤣🤣

@BBCArchive No. I made it myself.

@BBCArchive Reminds me of this..

That’s cool. Can you now do the one about the plane on a treadmill and if it takes off?

Awesome! That's something I was wondering about. Thanks! I thought it had too do with earth's rotation

I read 'far out' like a phrase of exasperation the first time, and thought it unfair that you were frustrated that more people didn't understand the mechanics. But then I reread it, and by 'far out' you obviously mean further away from earth/landing.

#アルテミス#オリオン#月 以下のサイトにもあるように、JAXAの人も以前から「オライオン」と呼んでいます。まだ両者混在状態なので、マスコミによって「オリオン」という間違った呼び方を定着させてはなりません。 オライオン (宇宙船) - Enpedia 天体名の日本語表記のルール - enpedia

Cool

Far out, man!

@Erdayastronaut you were just trying to describe the “west” movement before interface on stream! Here’s a reference

If this goes wrong, i’m gonna see it

They don’t aim toward the centre of the earth

cool visual but this is just relative motion, not some trajectory trick

Literally simple dynamics equations

I'm watching it now. So far, they haven't rerouted the engine power to the shields. I don't see why - they're not going to use the engines anymore.

Finally! Thanks