Making a space app to figure out how this NASA photo is possible

[00:00:00]On April 6th, 2026, the Artemis 2 crew aboard the Orion capsule snapped this photo. And out of the 400 [music] plus photos NASA uploaded, this is the only photo that has been short-circuiting my brain. Did [music] the Orion really travel this far past the moon? Because if you travel too far past the moon's gravitational pull, there's nothing to pull you back towards Earth. Now, I'm no orbital mechanics expert, but I'm pretty sure you'd need more than the moon's pull [music] to recover this orbit. How is this photo possible? I've come to believe that with NASA photos, what I see is all I get.

[00:00:31]But, think about that for a second.

[00:00:33]Hundreds of people coordinated to make this mission happen. Real astronauts flew on this real trajectory in real time. And NASA might be the best in the game at recording data. So, why is it then that the best way to relive this historic event in 2026 is just through a photo album? Does that not feel straight out of the school of Unga Bunga to you? Because if I just simply glance at the metadata for this photo, I learn that this photo was taken using manual exposure [music] setting, meaning this shot was premeditated. Someone knew exactly what shot they wanted to snap, and even took the time to dial in the right camera settings to get it. But, you'd never know that just by looking at it. But, most importantly, the metadata includes the time this photo was taken, which means [music] if NASA made a tool combining all this metadata just right, instead of just giving us a photo album, we can pinpoint exactly where the astronauts were on their trajectory when they snapped this flick, and maybe get a better idea how it was possible. But, if NASA won't do it, then step aside cuz I will. At the core of this project will be a 3D space viewer of the Orion's trajectory. And it'll be able to do all the 3D things, like pan, zoom in orbit, you get it. So, that I can get a really good look at the Orion's position where the mystery photo was snapped to see if it actually makes sense. And having a bunch of photos from the mission is the next important part, so that we can map these photos, let me change the color, onto the trajectory. And then I'll be able to add all the little bells and whistles that I can't think of at the moment. And this project will hopefully turn a very data limited square of pixels into a historical event that we can contextualize and get an answer to the mystery. Are you hyped? I'm hyped.

[00:02:07]But first, yo, I got to give my flowers, dog. Now, I'm not going to lie. I depressingly was prepared to die without ever getting an answer to my question.

[00:02:15]But legendary OG YouTuber Hank Green dropped one of the hardest space tools out right now, where he aggregates a bunch of the photos taken from the mission into one spot. can see them in chronological order. And it's such a good idea. And basically, the tool I need to help me understand the mystery of this photo. But I have one major issue with Hank's tool. It lacks the spatial context I need to get an answer to my question. I need to see Orion's perspective in relation to the moon [music] and Earth. But Hank's tool only gives me this tiny image in the corner as far as I know, in which I can't even see the moon. So, this won't do it for me. But that's not to say it's a bad tool. In fact, I'll admit that I'm very jealous of the way this man thinks. He wanted a NASA tool like this, couldn't find it, so he built it. But the part that's blowing my mind, when I asked him about his coding background, he said he just has some light web dev experience from back in the day. [music] So, Hank basically vibe coded a valuable research tool that even got a co-sign from NASA.

[00:03:10]Listen, we can all agree that there are a lot of dumb wasteful use cases for AI.

[00:03:14]This is definitely not one of them.

[00:03:16]Enabling people who don't know how to develop to be able to develop any idea that they have is the type of future that excites [music] me. And it's honestly this video that made me realize I was being a little too complacent with not getting an answer to my question. I'm a software developer, damn it. With enough thought, these coding fingers can get an answer to anything. So, all the flowers to Hank Green, and yo, big dog, [music] I'm sorry. But yes, I am practically lifting this idea right up out of your hands. In fact, you can call me Mr. Lifter, cuz I'm also going to lift a GitHub repo that was used to track the Artemis 2 mission live. Because a controversial man once said, "Good artists copy, but great artists are shiesties." Or something like that. And this repo already has most of the functionality that I'm looking for. So, I just need to modify it to do a couple of extra things. And after just a few short hours, I had the timeline UI already figured out with a few photos on it for testing. And surprisingly, I'm on track to complete this project in a day or two. But then, I ran into an interesting issue. There is no shot this is the correct trajectory alignment for these photos. This photo was not taken this close to the moon. It doesn't even make any sense. In fact, all the photos they seem kind of shifted. Yeah, I know. Here we go. Busted. This photo is coming around the other side of the moon with a little peek of the Earth. But here, the Earth is clearly in view. Uh-oh. I mean, I I don't fully understand because I synced the data with the metadata from the NASA photo book. So, I don't know.

[00:04:38]But I I I got to get to the bottom of this. All right. I figured it out and my investigation skills are undefeated yet again. So, peep game. So, it turns out I pulled this information from NASA's Flickr page, right? But as I understand it, after the photos are processed through editing software, it kind of messes up the metadata a little bit. You see, there's a lot of time markers in the metadata. And I first made the incorrect assumption that the time in the metadata is the time set to Eastern time. But that was incorrect. But then, I learned there's an offset variable that technically is the offset from UTC.

[00:05:11]That's the standardized time zone. But even when I use that, everything was still a little off. And then, I found another time slot in the metadata that had an offset for Pacific time. So, I tried to use that, and even that was still off. All to come to find out, the original time logged in the metadata is actually already in UTC. So, I can just ignore all the offsets. It's a little convoluted and confusing. And based on all the syncing experiments that I did, it kind of seems correct. But a couple photos might be off here and there.

[00:05:38]Look, it is what it is. Moving on. And now that that's fixed, all I have to do now is just populate the timeline with all the photos, surface a bunch of the metadata so you know what's going on.

[00:05:47]Maybe add some filters to view the photos, and then [music] I can finally get an answer to my question. And we're finally done. Let me give you a tour.

[00:05:56]All right, and right off the bat, we have the 3D viewer for the trajectory.

[00:06:00]Next up, we have the event timeline, which has all the photos placed on it.

[00:06:04]You can click on any of them, and it'll take you to that spot in the trajectory, and also show you the photo here in picture in picture, so you can see.

[00:06:11]Pretty straightforward. There's also photo timeline, which is just all the photos in chronological order. I can click on the picture in picture to see it in full resolution. There's a bunch of data that you can uh read. You can filter the images. Just see Orion. You can see only the photos from Earth. I think they're the boring photos, but you can do it if you want to. Here's a little shout-out. Go play my game, Ultra Bowlers, the greatest game you've never played yet. Every single photo has the description that NASA has provided.

[00:06:36]Sunlight traces through the curves of the ocean and clouds. Wow, that's very erotic. Who's down for some NASA fan fic? Lastly, one thing that really stood out to me is that they didn't get as close as I thought they would get to the moon, or at least as close as the mental model that I made up in my head. Cuz you know, it's kind of hard to get a sense of where the photos were taken when you're just looking at a bunch of photos randomly put together in an album. And so, I added this uh lens length metric to every single photo. This one's 400 mm, which brings up another interesting question. What did they actually see with their eyes? And it's been long agreed that 35 mm is about roughly what the human eye sees. And so, this image that you're looking at is basically more or less what the astronauts seen with their own eyes. This is how the moon looked. And where they were on the trajectory is right here. Isn't that awesome? But that also makes me want to scrub this timeline to see only the photos where they're 35 mm, so I can get a sense of like what it actually would have looked like with my own eyes. In fact, uh I'm going to add that feature right now. Why not? All right, so I've added the uh human eye button that you can press, and it will filter all the 35 mm photos. Uh that includes the ones on Earth. That's a little spooky to see the Earth that size. how are they in the total trajectory about not even halfway there yet. That still be very spooky to look out your window and see how far home is. It looks like they all got their own little window shot for some reason.

[00:07:53]Nerds. But I can't really, I'd want my own too. Okay, here's an interesting 35 mm. I think this is the best it's going to get for what I'm after. This is damn near the closest point and this is what the astronauts would have seen looking out the window. Yeah, if I seen this with my eyes, I would feel it's fake. No shot this was 35 mm. Oh, man, I think I would have been tripping seeing it. All right, and the moment of truth is here.

[00:08:18]It is finally time to do an autopsy on the mystery photo. How is this photo possible? First off, the description seen side by side from deep space, the moon and Earth share the frame. Yet Earth appears as a small delicate crescent against the blackness beyond. I swear this NASA erotica is going to make me hot. So, the first thing that stands out to me is 14 mm is the lens length, which [music] is probably what's going on here. But another question I have is the angle. Is the angle even possible?

[00:08:48]And if we hit [music] follow Orion, yeah, I guess that does check out.

[00:08:54]Looking at it like this, I think this photo actually makes sense when you consider the moon is not quite yet at the closest point to the Orion. [music] And with the wider lens, you would be able to fit both of them in one shot. I think that's it. I honestly think that is what's going on here. It's just a wider lens. Yo, I'm not going to lie, I feel kind of dumb because the mystery doesn't involve some conspiracy or some secret space probe. It's just a 14 mm focal length lens. That's a lens that's wider than what the human eye can see, which makes everything look further away than it actually is. Which means the moon didn't look that far away to the astronauts on board [music] Orion. I just didn't understand how much the lens was distorting the truth, but now I do.

[00:09:39]And now there's a tool that also lets you see [music] exactly where Orion was when hundreds of photos were snapped.

[00:09:45]Maybe it can help you solve a Artemis mystery of your own. Or maybe you just want to relive the mission with the astronauts. This tool can help. Link in the description. Join the Patreon to see all my videos a little earlier and ad-free. Send me stuff, info's on screen. And go play my turn-based fighter Ultra Boutros. Until the next one.