Artemis II updates
Social coverage highlights that NASA’s Artemis II is on a lunar trajectory and sending back Earth images as part of its lunar flyby activities, and some posts note a Saudi satellite called ‘Shams’ is being mentioned in connection with the mission — alongside reported communication blackouts tied to the flight. ( ). Those mentions are circulating now on social feeds, but they mix official mission milestones (trajectories, imagery) with less‑verifiable claims about third‑party satellite roles and comms issues. ( )
A trip to the Moon always disappears for a while. On April 6, NASA said Orion passed behind the Moon and entered a planned 40-minute communications blackout because the lunar surface blocked radio signals to Earth. (nasa.gov) That blackout was not a spacecraft failure. NASA said the loss of signal was expected with an Earth-based communications system, and it compared the event to the same kind of blackout during Apollo missions and the uncrewed Artemis I flight. (nasa.gov) Artemis II is NASA’s first crewed lunar mission since Apollo 17 in December 1972. NASA launched the four-person crew from Kennedy Space Center on April 1, 2026, for an approximately 10-day trip around the Moon and back. (nasa.gov) The crew is Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency. NASA says Orion is testing the spacecraft and life-support systems on a real deep-space flight before later Artemis missions attempt a lunar landing. (nasa.gov) The images people are sharing are tied to a real mission milestone. NASA released official lunar flyby photos on April 7, including an “Earthset” view taken at 6:41 p.m. Eastern time on April 6, just three minutes before Orion slipped behind the Moon. (nasa.gov) NASA’s caption on that image says the bright part of Earth showed daylight over Australia and Oceania while the dark part was in nighttime. The same release said the photos also showed the Moon’s South Pole-Aitken basin, one of the oldest and largest impact basins in the solar system. (nasa.gov) Some social posts are also mixing Artemis II with a Saudi satellite called Shams. Saudi state media and the Saudi Space Agency said on April 4 that Shams was deployed aboard the Space Launch System during the Artemis II mission and that initial contact was established after launch. (spa.gov.sa) What is not clear from NASA’s public mission updates is any operational role for Shams in Orion’s flight or its communications. NASA’s April 1 launch update and April 6 lunar flyby update describe the crewed mission, the Moon flyby, and the planned blackout, but they do not say that Shams handled Orion relay duties. (nasa.gov 1) (nasa.gov 2) So the clean version is simpler than the feed makes it look. The lunar trajectory is real, the Earth images are real, and the blackout was a scheduled line-of-sight gap during the far-side flyby; the extra claims about third-party communications support are, at least in NASA’s public record so far, unconfirmed. (nasa.gov 1) (nasa.gov 2)
