NASA’s Moon Mission Is A Total Failure, And A Complete Embarrassment

By Joshua Tyler
| Updated 5 seconds ago

NASA is in the midst of completing one of the most momentous achievements in human history. This week, four humans went further out into space than anyone has before, as part of a flyby of the moon. It’s the first time mankind has even attempted to approach the moon since the termination of the Apollo program more than fifty years ago. 

And it’s a total failure.

The astronauts got there and will likely get back, and that’s good, but the larger goal in doing something like this is to get people to care enough about it so they can do more. They didn’t do that at all. Worse, they didn’t even seem to try. Everything NASA did was completely and totally wrong. 

Branding The Mission As A Prank

First, they launched the mission on April first. For you non-Americans, that’s April Fool’s Day, a holiday dedicated to pulling pranks. This went over well with all flat-earthers out there, and only strengthened skepticism that moon missions are faked.

That NASA could have launched on April 2nd, but chose April Fools’ Day on purpose, should probably get everyone in charge of the agency fired. However, that was only the start of their epic string of failures.

It’s 2026 And We Still Can’t Take Pictures In Space

Next, as always seems to happen, NASA’s team of geniuses has been unable to find a way to send any decent cameras on the Artemis II mission. Or if they did, they weren’t used.

The Astronauts had their iPhones with them, which was a good idea, so presumably they could have just pointed them out the window and then tweeted the result. If they did that, NASA chose not to highlight any of their pictures. You won’t see many astronaut selfies going viral.

Instead of an endless stream of cool videos and photos of our planet as Orion left, NASA has released three photos that their crew took of the Earth.

Photo one (above) is of the Sahara Desert, where no one lives. Also, it’s upside down from our normal orientation. NASA could have simply rotated it, but didn’t.

Photo two (above) is of the Australian Outback, where virtually no one lives.

Photo three (above) is of the Earth in darkness, filtered so that even city lights aren’t visible. As a result, it looks like a dark circle with a sliver of light on it. In other words, it looks like nothing.

You Can’t See Your House From There

Then there was the approach to the moon, where we saw a vague gray shape. The astronauts claim the stars out their windows are impressive, but apparently no one has figured out how to photograph them. And then the capsule was past the moon and on its way back to Earth, having shown us nothing.

Now the mission is on its way home, having shown the people of Earth emptiness. Empty space, empty desert land, empty gray circle of dust. Not even an image we could point at and say: I can see my house from here!

The astronauts did give some awkward, pre-written speeches that they probably didn’t even write themselves. It’s not their fault; making this interesting isn’t their job.

NASA will now mumble excuses about why they can’t get any good pictures, and then throw in some technical jargon about why the mission was important to science despite how boring it looked. They’ll say it matters because it sets up future missions. Doubtless, those missions will also be unable to do basic photography and social media marketing.

Space Travel’s Chief Value Is In What It Teaches Us About Ourselves

Unlike age of sail exploration, in which brave men in ships traveled vast distances and returned with gold and exotic fruits as proof of their journey’s value, space travel has no real, tangible benefit to most of the people funding it. Its chief value to humanity is in what it can teach us about ourselves. 

When NASA can’t even show people a picture of North America, the continent funding its missions, it has abandoned the real reason for its existence. 

NASA Just Made Every Kid Hate Space

I tried to tune in with my 9-year-old son, who was excited about space travel. We watched the rocket launch, which was badly filmed. He tried to be excited about it, but it was just a two-second burst of fire. Then the camera malfunctioned and cut out. It came back on in an extreme close-up, and then the rocket was gone.

Later space footage of it separating was grainy and hard to make out. By the way, when SpaceX has done launches like this, their videos of the rocket are always pristine and beautiful. You see it all. Somehow, despite billions in tax dollars, that’s not something that can be accomplished by NASA.

When the mission arrived at the moon a few days later, we watched the flyby live feed, which largely consisted of two women sitting in front of the camera spouting word salad and occasionally explaining why we can’t see anything. When Orion came around the dark side of the moon and returned to contact with Earth, we saw nothing. While looking at nothing, we had to sit through a crew member reading a boring, grandiose, pre-prepared speech. 

I tried to spice it up for my son by showing him pictures from NASA’s X feed. Except, well, there were only those three. Also, there was a video of some floating Nutella, which was almost certainly a paid, space-faring native ad.

The only interesting footage in the entire endeavor was posted on X by Elon Musk, who seems to understand the assignment, even if NASA doesn’t. Here it is…

If Elon Musk had this footage, then NASA did too. For some reason, NASA didn’t think it was important to make a big deal out of it and post it on social media.

Soon, we went back to the NASA live feed, showing nothing. We’d been watching for nearly an hour now and, after a few more minutes, my son asked: “Can we turn it off, Dad? There’s nothing to see. I’d rather read a book.” That was the end of his interest in the space program. 

If we’d stuck around for another half hour of watching nothing, he might have seen that video Elon Musk posted on NASA’s live feed. But he’s a 9-year-old boy, not a bedridden geriatric with nothing to do but stare at a black television monitor.

Thanks, NASA. This is what total failure looks like, but at least my son has books to fuel his imagination.