Why are the Artemis II photos on Flickr?

NASA shares Artemis II mission photos on Flickr rather than its own website, and this post explains the historical and philosophical reasons why. Flickr, founded in 2004, pioneered high-resolution photo storage, Creative Commons licensing, and user data ownership during the Web 2.0 era. After passing through Yahoo and Verizon, it was acquired by SmugMug, which created the Flickr Foundation with a 100-year plan to preserve public digital archives in partnership with the U.S. Library of Congress. Flickr's combination of full-resolution storage, explicit public domain licensing, and long-term institutional commitment makes it uniquely suited for preserving historically significant government imagery — especially as current political pressures threaten the integrity of official government websites and public records.