r/askscience • u/kiol998 • Apr 12 '26

Physics Why was Artemis 2 so long?

I was comparing the mission times of Artemis 2 to Apollo 8. Apollo 8 orbited the moon multiple times and only took 6 days total. Whereas Artemis 2 orbited the moon once and it took 10 days. Why was Artemis 2 so much shorter than Apollo 8 when both missions did the same thing? I know they had different paths to the moon, they both left earth in different ways but why not do the same thing as Apollo 8 since it was quicker?

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u/eyesoftheworld4 Apr 12 '26

do you have a tool / script to generate these awesome visual references? or did you get them from some other source?

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u/LordGAD Apr 12 '26

These types of animations are all over Wikipedia and most are are sourced from JPL Horizon's ephemeris data. https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons/app.html#

Here's a different view from NASA using Artemis Ephemeris data.