Artemis II Photo Timeline

An attempt to contextualize the photography of the Artemis II mission chronologically, in space, and with other media including video and audio from the mission as well as the crew activity schedule. Real-time trajectory visualization, distance from Earth and Moon, and photography metadata.

Live site: ArtemisTimeline.com

How it works

The entire site is two HTML files and a data file — no build step, no framework, no dependencies. Media files (photos and audio) are served from Cloudflare R2; only the code and metadata live in this repo.

index.html     The viewer — CSS, HTML, and JS in one self-contained file
photos.js      All photo/audio metadata (titles, timestamps, camera info)
admin.html     Visual editor for photos.js (toggle entries, edit metadata, export)
faq.html       Frequently asked questions

Images and audio are hosted on Cloudflare R2 and referenced via MEDIA_BASE at the top of index.html. To run locally with your own copies, set MEDIA_BASE = '' and place files in web/ and audio/ directories.

Adding photos

1. Create a 1600px-wide web version of your image: convert original.jpg -resize 1600x -quality 85 web/filename.jpg
2. Upload it to the web/ folder in the R2 bucket (via the Cloudflare dashboard or wrangler r2 object put artemistimeline/web/filename.jpg --file=web/filename.jpg).
3. Open admin.html in your browser and click + Add Photo.
4. Fill in the filename, timestamp, photographer, camera info, etc. The entry will sort into chronological position automatically.
5. Click Export photos.js to download the updated data file.
6. Replace photos.js with the exported version and deploy.

Timestamps

Every timestamp in the system is Eastern Daylight Time (EDT / UTC-4). If your photo's EXIF data is in a different timezone, you'll need to convert it. The cameras used for this mission were set to at least 6 different timezones (EDT, PDT, HST, CET, UTC+4, UTC), so always cross-reference against known mission events:

• Liftoff: April 1, 2026 at 18:35:25 EDT
• Splashdown: April 10, 2026 at 20:07:27 EDT

Photo ID conventions

The viewer identifies photos by filename patterns:

• 55182417729_3e6cb18922_o.jpg — Flickr (11-digit ID)
• 9608627.jpg — DVIDS / Navy (7-digit ID)
• art002e014256~large.jpg — NASA art-series
• KSC-20260401-PH-KLS01_0013.jpg — Kennedy Space Center
• NHQ202604100032.jpg — NASA Headquarters photographer
• ig-*.mp4 / yt-*.jpg — Instagram / YouTube embeds

Data sources

• Photo metadata: NASA Flickr, DVIDS, NASA Image Gallery
• Flight trajectory: JPL Horizons API (target -1024, center Earth 399)
• Crew schedule: NASA's Artemis II Overview Timeline PDF
• Mission audio: NASA livestream recordings

Admin editor

Open admin.html to browse and edit the photo database. You can search, filter by status (enabled/disabled/videos/crew photos), toggle individual entries on and off, and edit all metadata fields. Changes are exported as a new photos.js file.

Star History

Built with

Claude Code with Opus 4.6. JPL Horizons API for flight data. Flickr API for pulling image descriptions.

License

The code is released under the MIT License. NASA imagery is generally not subject to U.S. copyright and is made available under NASA's Media Usage Guidelines. U.S. Navy imagery is public domain per DoD Visual Information policy.