Hey folks!

On April 1st, 2026, NASA launched Artemis II, the first crewed lunar mission since Apollo 17, with four astronauts. A 10-day free-return trajectory around the Moon, powered by the most powerful rocket ever built, everything about this mission screamed cutting-edge and bold.

And the camera Reid Wiseman held up to photograph Earth from a quarter million miles away? One he affectionately called the “old-school Nikon”.

Now we know what you’re thinking. A 10-year-old Nikon D5 at the centre of one of the most advanced missions, feels like a mismatch, right?

But here’s the thing. It was the best tool for the job.

You see, space is extraordinarily dark. The Moon’s surface swings between -173°C and +127°C. Beyond low Earth orbit, radiation levels are far higher than what the International Space Station deals with every day. In these conditions, a camera’s ability to handle darkness matters far more than how many megapixels it has.

And this is exactly where the D5 stands out.

When it launched, its headline feature was a staggering ISO range that extended up to 32,80,000. It might sound excessive for everyday photography, but pushing the sensor that far made it exceptionally good at producing cleaner images in low light. In fact, in this area, the D5 doesn’t just hold up against current Nikon Z cameras, it actually beats them.

But that’s only half the story. The other half is trust — something that, in NASA’s world, takes years to earn.

Every piece of hardware that goes beyond low Earth orbit must pass rigorous qualification tests, including launch vibrations, thermal extremes, vacuum exposure, and radiation bombardment. The D5 has been through all of this.

And this dynamic isn’t new for Nikon.

Its relationship with NASA dates back to 1971, when a modified Nikon F Photomic FTN flew on Apollo 15, becoming the first 35mm camera in space. To make it space-ready, Nikon engineers had to develop a special lubricant that wouldn’t evaporate in a vacuum — something standard lubricants can’t handle without atmospheric pressure.

That kind of problem-solving quietly made its way into Nikon’s consumer cameras over time.

Since then, Nikon has been on every NASA crewed mission — from the F3 on the Space Shuttle to the F5 on the ISS from 1999, the D2XS on the first all-digital shuttle mission in 2007, followed by the D4, and then the D5 sent to the ISS in 2024. Over all these years, NASA has never really had a reason to switch.

So yeah, the story of the Nikon D5 on Artemis II is a simple reminder that the newest thing isn’t always the best thing. And sometimes, that means a decade-old camera quietly outperforming its successors while orbiting the Moon.

Or, as they say, old is gold.

Here’s a soundtrack to put you in the mood…

Rangaada Ragale by Vijayaprakash and Harshika Devanath

You can thank our reader, Namdev Shenoy, for this lovely rec!

And if you’d like your music recommendation featured too, send them our way, especially hidden gems from underrated Indian artists many of us haven’t discovered yet. We can’t wait to hear them!

What caught our eye this week

Do we really need to unmask Satoshi Nakamoto?

Every few years, someone claims they’ve finally cracked one of the internet’s greatest mysteries.

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?

The anonymous creator of Bitcoin. The person or maybe even a group of people, who wrote a nine-page white paper in 2008 and built a system that would go on to reshape finance, spawn an entire industry, and create billions of dollars in wealth.

And naturally, people want a face to go with that story. So, the hunt never really stops.

The latest attempt comes from a New York Times investigation that spent months combing through decades-old emails, forum posts, cryptography mailing lists, and linguistic quirks. The conclusion, or at least the strongest suspicion, points toward a British cryptographer named Adam Back.

And the evidence is… dense.

John Carreyrou, the journalist behind this investigation, says that Back and Nakamoto share writing patterns and overlapping technical ideas.  And he even invented something called Hashcash, which Bitcoin was later built on. He even points out oddly specific similarities in how words were hyphenated or misspelled. At one point, the analysis narrows down tens of thousands of possible candidates to just one.

It is, in many ways, an impressive piece of investigative work. And yet, it raises a far more interesting question.

Even if you could prove who Nakomoto is, should you?

Because here’s the uncomfortable truth. Unmasking Satoshi might actually be the worst thing you could do for Bitcoin.

To understand why, you have to go back to what Bitcoin was trying to solve in the first place. For decades, digital money had one fundamental problem. Trust. Every system needed a central authority to keep records and verify transactions. And that central point was always a weakness. It could be shut down, regulated, corrupted, or simply fail.

But Bitcoin frowned upon that idea. It had no central authority to verify transactions, but a network of independent participants “agreeing” on a shared ledger. So, in theory, it does not matter who created it. The system was designed to run without needing to trust any single person.

Now imagine if Satoshi suddenly had a name, a face, and an address. Governments and regulators would have a target and have someone to question.

And perhaps most importantly, Bitcoin would no longer feel fully decentralised. Because even if the system itself remains unchanged, perception matters. And the moment you attach a human identity to something, you introduce the idea of influence, control, and responsibility. 

There is also a more immediate risk. Satoshi is believed to own roughly 1.1 million Bitcoins. At today’s prices, that is around $80 Billion.

Now imagine knowing exactly who controls that fortune.

Every move the person makes would be scrutinised. Every silence would be interpreted. And every rumour would move markets. The system would become, in part, a reflection of one person’s actions.

Which is exactly what Bitcoin was designed to avoid.

At some level, it is understandable that we as humans like stories. And more importantly, we like knowing whom to credit, whom to blame, and who to admire.

But not every mystery needs solving. In fact, this might be one of those cases where the mystery is the point. And maybe that deserves a little more respect than curiosity.

So the next time you see a headline claiming the mystery is finally solved, it is worth pausing for a second.

Not to ask whether it is true. But to ask whether it even matters.

Because in a system built to remove trust in individuals, chasing that individual might be missing the point entirely.

Readers Recommend

This week our reader, Surabhi Soni recommends reading Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts.

It’s a semi-autobiography based on the life of the author himself and his journey to Mumbai’s underworld. Interestingly, he began writing the manuscript of this novel while serving a sentence in an Australian prison during the 1990s after escaping and spending ten years on the run, largely in Mumbai (then Bombay).

Thank you for the recommendation, Surabhi!

That’s it from us this week. We’ll see you next Sunday!

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