Make Safari open on specified website

When I open Safari, I like to to load the NASA picture of the day site (<https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html>). This worked fine on older versions of Safari but since the system updated to Sequoia, I can't make it happen. I just get a completely blank page with an empty URL bar.

The option to have the browser open on a chosen web page just doesn't seem to be there any more. In the screenshots, you can see that the site I want is set as the "Homepage" - but whatever ""Homepage" means, apparently it isn't "load this page when opening the browser". In fact, the page never comes up, not in new tabs or windows, not on loading Safari.

And, under "Safari opens with", the other screenshot shows that "the web page I asked for" isn't an option either.

Has this functionality simply been deleted? Or am I doing something wrong?