How to load a historical moment
The splashdown of the Orion capsule early Saturday morning, marking the end of the Artemis II mission, was extraordinarily spectacular and suspenseful. In the most dangerous stage of the mission, other elements come into play, such as the beauty of the images, the violence of the contact with the atmosphere, and the eventual loss of connection with the crew.
On TV3, after the gala of Eufòria, a special news program was broadcast with the severe austerity that characterizes these broadcasts. Jaume Freixes and astronomer Ignasi Ribas correctly covered a historic event that, on television, could perhaps have been highlighted a little more. The feeling of loneliness and inhospitable broadcast was a bit sad. It's a shame that TV3 doesn't take advantage of these opportunities to promote live coverage. It would demonstrate journalistic ambition and that, beyond the digital platform, the antenna still matters to them.
On La 1, Lorenzo Milà hosted the special program with the collaboration of TVE's head of meteorology and astrophysics, Mònica López, journalist Melanie Stüber – who has covered the Artemis information – and the director of space missions at Indra Space Systems, Simone Centuori. They interviewed experts and had an interpreter to translate the internal line of the NASA signal. The problem was the competition among collaborators to speak, interrupting each other, talking over the connections with NASA and forgetting an essential fact: emotion. Even at the critical moment when the capsule collided with the atmosphere, the headline "Silencio en las comunicaciones" was added on screen. This silence, the tension in the control room, and the general suffering could have been felt. The moment of risk should have been highlighted by paying maximum attention to the image. And, paradoxically, it turned into a cacophony, a chaotic discussion in which audio channels overlapped. It was difficult for the viewer to understand anything. To make matters worse, at the moment of rescuing the crew and recovering the capsule from the sea, they went to a commercial break. We were left without seeing it.
There is another circumstance, common to both channels, that says a lot about our time. Unusual images of great spectacularity were being broadcast. The feeling of fear and fascination make it a sublime moment. The images of the approach to Earth, the reflection of the astronauts in the capsule's glass, the deployment of the parachutes, the impact with the sea... are spectacular. And television covers the screen: they cover a fifth of the image with the headline, they put a QR code on it, the tag to comment on it on social media, the channel's bug, the time, the label that says it's live, the website where to find more information and adjacent boxes with the presenters and commentators. They even cover the speed and distance data provided by NASA, which would be interesting to see. Where is the beauty of the images? Where is the respect for the visual integrity of the facts?