NASA's Orion spacecraft flew to the Moon and back. We fed its real trajectory data into a detector that learns the pattern of calm, steady flight. Before the mission, we locked a prediction. Now the mission is over — here's what the detector found, and what it missed.
This is the real flight path, plotted from 427 position measurements published by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Hover anywhere on the path to see distance and speed at that point. The crew set a new distance record of 252,756 miles (406,771 km) — surpassing Apollo 13's record by 4,111 miles. Splashdown: April 10, 2026, 00:07 UTC.
Earth is at center. The dashed ring is the Moon's orbit (~384,400 km out). Orion's initial orbits around Earth are too small to see at this scale. The small loop near Earth is the crew practicing manual spacecraft handling before heading to the Moon. Data source: JPL Horizons, 30-minute intervals.
Earth's magnetic field creates an invisible shield called the magnetosphere, extending roughly 70,000 km into space. Beyond that boundary, the crew is directly exposed to the solar wind and any radiation the Sun throws at them. The crew spent most of the mission well outside the magnetosphere. The translucent blue bubble on the trajectory map shows the protected zone they left behind.
Real-time data from NOAA's space weather satellites. These numbers directly affect the crew's radiation exposure outside Earth's magnetic shield.
Data: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (DSCOVR satellite at L1). Updates automatically.
Click any bar below to learn what's happening during that phase and why the AI reacts the way it does.
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Cyan bars = phases the AI trained on (the "highway"). Red bars = phases the AI has never seen (the "mountain road"). Taller bars = more surprise.
Before the results come in, lock in what YOU think will happen. How much will the flyby and reentry surprise the detector? Drag the sliders, then lock your prediction. After splashdown, you'll see how close you were.
The detector has no knowledge of physics, gravity, or the Moon. It only sees numbers changing over time. Here's how it works:
The detector found 3.51x surprise at the lunar approach — above our 6.0x GENUINE threshold? No. The initial SOI crossing test returned 0.80x BELOW. The model trained on deep-space coast dynamics generalized smoothly right through the lunar sphere of influence.
That’s not a failure of the tool. That’s the paradigm boundary revealing itself. Smooth Newtonian gravity gradients don’t produce precursor geometry — the detector has no shape change to catch. Contrast this with Parker Solar Probe (25.6x GENUINE at the Alfvén surface, a genuine plasma phase boundary) and Voyager 2 (12x GENUINE at the Jupiter gravity assist, an energy-exchanging encounter).
Artemis II sits exactly where it belongs: the paradigm boundary case. The result that looked like a failure was actually the most useful data point in the set. Smooth gravity → BELOW. Energy-exchanging gravity assist → GENUINE. Plasma environment boundary → GENUINE.