Some quirky facts on the US space program.
Mr. Bean is a British comedy created by Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis, which first aired on ITV on January 1, 1990. The main comedic character is Mr. Bean.
The producers have always denied that Mr. Bean was named after Mr. Bean of Apollo 12, who unfortunately made 3 accidental mistakes on the moon and on splashdown. (See p. 147, The Moon Landings: One Giant Leap by Colin Salter, 2019)
The current April 2026 mission to the moon is called Artemis as a tribute to the Apollo program. In Greek mythology, Artemis is the goddess of the Moon and the twin sister of Apollo.
The main spacecraft for the Artemis II mission is the Orion spacecraft.
Apollo 11’s command craft was called Columbia, and the lunar module was Eagle, which gave rise to the immortal phrase—which I use often when landing on a foreign land—”The Eagle has landed.”
NASA required the astronauts in Apollo 11 to name their spacecraft more seriously after the astronauts in Apollo 10 chose the names Snoopy and Charlie Brown. (p. 129).
LWH, 7 April 2026, 7 am