WBUR TODAY: From MIT to the moon
❤️ Donate Monday, April 6, 2026 ⛅ Increasingly cloudy, with a high of 53. Good Morning Boston, Artemis II astronauts are expected to begin their lunar flyby this afternoon , setting a new record for the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth. The Orion spacecraft is outfitted with 32 cameras and devices to capture out-of-this-world imagery — which will be sent back to Earth with the help of some local tech. Beaming down: While circling the moon, astronauts will collect data and imagery to transmit back to NASA in Houston after the flyby using a new laser communications system developed by researchers at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington. Since the Apollo missions in the late 1960s, NASA has relied on radio frequencies to communicate with astronauts in space. And the crew aboard Orion is still using radio to communicate. But this is the first time astronauts will have a chance to use lasers to send data — such as high-definition photos an...
