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This is Defector, a new sports blog and media company. We made this place together, we own it together, we run it together. Without access, without favor, without discretion, and without interference.

Defector

Barry Petchesky

Shots

You’re Not Looking Through 12,000 New Artemis Photos, So Here Are Some Of The Best

Science

Let Pluto Rest In Dwarf Planet Peace

It’s Time For The Scariest Part Of Artemis

Earthset captured through the Orion spacecraft window at 6:41 p.m. EDT, April 6, 2026, during the Artemis II crew’s flyby of the Moon. A muted blue Earth with bright white clouds sets behind the cratered lunar surface. The dark portion of Earth is experiencing nighttime. On Earth’s day side, swirling clouds are visible over the Australia and Oceania region. In the foreground, Ohm crater has terraced edges and a flat floor interrupted by central peaks. Central peaks form in complex craters when the lunar surface, liquefied on impact, splashes upwards during the crater’s formation.

Why We Fly

What Would You Do Behind The Moon?

Artemis Took A Picture Of Us

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA - APRIL 01: (EDITOR'S NOTE: Getty Images provides access to this publicly distributed image for editorial purposes and is not the copyright owner. Additional permissions may be required and are the sole responsibility of the end user.) In this handout image provided by NASA, NASA's Space Launch System rocket carrying the Orion spacecraft with NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, commander; Victor Glover, pilot; Christina Koch, mission specialist; and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, mission specialist onboard launches on the Artemis II mission, Wednesday, April 1, 2026, from Launch Complex 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA's Artemis II mission will take Wiseman, Glover, Koch, and Hansen on a 10-day journey around the Moon and back aboard their Orion spacecraft. The quartet launched at 6:35 p.m. EDT, from Launch Complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center. (Photo by Aubrey Gemignani/NASA/Getty Images)

Artemis Boldly Goes Where No Toilet Has Gone Before

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA - JANUARY 17: NASA's Artemis II is rolled from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on January 17, 2026 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA’s integrated SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II mission are being rolled to Launch Pad 39B ahead of the 10-day mission in February 2026, which will take the crew around the Moon and back to Earth. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

I Am Not Immune To The Charms Of A Really Big Moon Rocket

The Space Shuttle Discovery, aboard a specially modified NASA Boeing 747, flies over the Washington, DC, April 17, 2012, as seen from Arlington, Virginia. NASA is transferring the Shuttle, which completed 39 missions and spent 365 days in space, to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport. AFP PHOTO / Saul LOEB (Photo by Saul LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

Bills Week

The “Big Beautiful Bill” Is Trying To Steal A Space Shuttle

charismatic megafauna (they/them)

Sabrina Imbler

Mamta Patel Nagaraja, a fired NASA associate chief scientist for exploration and research, giving a keynote at the Department of Transportation for a White House event

Interviews

An Interview With A Fired NASA Associate Chief Scientist

Let’s Go See What’s Swimming Around On Europa

Albert Burneko

The United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket with Boeing's CST-100 Starliner spacecraft launches from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on June 5, 2024. Boeing launched its very first astronauts bound for the International Space Station aboard a Starliner capsule, which joins a select club of spacecraft to carry humans beyond Earth.

Boeing Starliner Astronauts Electively Spending Five More Months In Space To Hitch Ride In Different Vehicle Due To Preference For Not Dying

The United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket with Boeing's CST-100 Starliner spacecraft appears as a blazing meteor with a long trail of vapor as it launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on June 5, 2024.

This Is So Stupid

Do Not Say The Boeing Starliner Astronauts Are Stranded In Space, Which They Cannot Presently Return From Due To Problems With Their Spacecraft

NASA Must Put Me On The Simulated Mars Mission, To Test The Astronauts’ Patience

a silhouette of a semi truck in front of a starry sky

Vibrations From “Interstellar Meteor” Actually From Local Truck; Or, Fact-Checking The Celebrity Scientist

A photo of a black UFO looking thing in the desert

This Is How You Get Zombies, NASA

A Quick Update On A Thing 28 Billion Light Years Away

A NASA image of one of the Voyager space probes. Voyager 1 and its identical sister craft Voyager 2 were launched in 1977 to study the outer Solar System and eventually interstellar space. (Photo by NASA/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Voyager 2 Has A Few Last Things To Say

IN SPACE - MAY 29: In this handout provided by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), back dropped by planet Earth the International Space Station (ISS) is seen from NASA space shuttle Endeavour after the station and shuttle began their post-undocking relative separation May 29, 2011 in space. After 20 years, 25 missions and more than 115 million miles in space, NASA space shuttle Endeavour is on the last leg of its final flight to the International Space Station before being retired and donated to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. Capt. Mark E. Kelly, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' (D-AZ) husband, has lead mission STS-134 as it delivered the Express Logistics Carrier-3 (ELC-3) and the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-2) to the International Space Station. (Photo by NASA via Getty Images)

We’re Getting Really Good At Reusing Space Pee

How Will We Find Alien Life?

People watch the landing of NASA's InSight spacecraft on the planet Mars on television screens at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California on November 26, 2018. - Cheers and applause erupted at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a $993 million unmanned lander, called InSight, touched down on the Red Planet and managed to send back its first picture. (Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP) (Photo credit should read FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)

Goodbye To InSight, The Lander That Uncovered Mars’s Innermost Secrets

Justin Ellis

Life's Rich Pageant

Humanity Can, Should, And Must Keep Hucking Shit Against The Stars

Staff Writer
Find me on Signal @DefectorChris.19

Chris Thompson

When The International Space Station Dies, We’ll Lose More Than A Big Hunk Of Metal

A view of the asteroid Bennu, from the camera of OSIRIS-REx.

NASA