Read the full article on KETV 7
Diving off ‘a skyscraper backwards’: Artemis II astronauts describe their historic mission
Reed, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy, good luck. Godspeed, Artemis 2. Let’s go. It was an amazing ride uphill. We have good separation, good motion. Houston is go for TLI. We have the start of the translunar injection burn that will send the crew around the moon, the first humans to do so in over 50 years. You can see the entire globe from pole to pole. It was the most spectacular moment. As of 30 seconds ago, you are now closer to the moon than you are to us on Earth. Good morning Integrity and good morning moon. We caught *** view of. one. We look like we’re smiling at you. Good afternoon and welcome to NASA’s Johnson Space Center for our Artemis 2 crew news conference. The Artemis 2 crew is back on Earth and they are ready to discuss their record breaking mission with you today. Before we get into the question and answer portion of the event, we will start with some brief opening remarks from Reed. Go ahead. Thanks, Courtney. Um, well, that just happened. Uh, it’s great to sit here and watch your mission go by in, uh, in *** short clip there. What ***, what an amazing journey that was. Uh, first and foremost, uh, Victor, Christina, Jeremy, just thank you. Like this was an unbelievable adventure and it was made possible by this crew and, and the support of each other throughout the whole thing and I’ve said it so many times, we are just, we are bonded forever. I mean that’s the closest 4 humans can be and not be *** family. Uh, so it was just an amazing adventure and every single person on that crew lifted each other up the entire time, um, so I just can’t thank the three of you enough, um, while we’re giving thanks, you’re welcome, uh, while we’re giving thanks as, as astronauts, we, I feel like we’re just always thanking the team, we’re always thanking the team. So I think today we’re just gonna start by thanking the world. Let’s just thank the world and let’s break that down for, for one minute and then I’ll hand it back to Courtney, but. This NASA organization and their international partners, they put together this amazing vehicle, the Orion spacecraft that we named Integrity atop the Space Launch System, riding to the moon on *** European service module. They provided this massive structure that was able to push 4 humans around the moon and bring them safely back. So thank you to every single person that had *** hand in building that machine because it was *** magnificent machine. But then we would also be remiss if we didn’t thank. The media, if we didn’t thank the content creators and if we didn’t thank the world for just tuning in for *** second and getting hooked on this mission, we were certainly hooked on this mission, but when we came home, we were shocked at the the global outpouring of support, of pride, of ownership of this mission, and really I think at the beginning that’s what the four of us wanted. We wanted to go out and try to do something that would bring the world together, to unite the world. And then I’ll just wrap that all up with uh the astronaut’s creed is always to launch as friends as land and land as friends, and when you live together in *** small group for as long as you do on the space station or even 10 days, it’s *** challenge, but I am here to tell the world we launched as friends and we came back as best friends. Thank you. All right, and with that we will begin taking questions due to the limited time we have today and the high volume of requests, we ask that media limit themselves to one question please. We’ll start here in the room with Will. Go ahead. Hi, Will Robinson Smith with Space Flight. Now it’s wonderful to see you all again in person this time. Um, question for reasons you brought up the, the name of your spacecraft and announced it back in September when we last saw you here in person. Integrity you mentioned was not only the name of the spacecraft, but the ethos that you wanted to embody throughout the course of the training, the mission, and when you got back here on Earth. So I wonder. Having spent 9+ days physically in integrity, how you found yourself being in integrity, you know, emotionally and practically as it was to exercise the spacecraft for the first time. Thank you. Well, you addressed it to me, so I’ll take it. Um, you, you know, we’ve talked *** lot about integrity and for folks that have followed us, uh, there’s *** saying that we learned from one of our National Outdoor Leadership School instructors, integrity is not *** 1 or *** 0. You don’t either have it or not have it. Um, you can be in integrity and you can be out of integrity, and I will tell you I’ll be the first to admit that there were moments on this mission where I was out of integrity because sometimes the view or the human experience would just pull me away from the work and uh. And it just, it happens and it’s *** beautiful thing to get to witness what we got to witness, but at the end of the day you’ve got to do the mission too. And so there were moments where I was out of integrity. There were moments where each of us would fall out for *** second, but the coolest part of that word I was reflecting on last night. We named that spacecraft Integrity and it just kind of coalesced this thread in the four of us and whenever someone would slip out, it was amazing to watch the other three pull them back in and what *** glorious thing. Anybody want to add anything for Integrity is just such ***, such the perfect name for this crew and this spacecraft. We’re gonna take *** few more questions here in the room and then go over to our phone bridge. Just *** reminder for those on the phone bridge to please press 1 when you’re ready to enter the queue. Go ahead. Hi, I’m, I’m Nick Notario with ABC 13. I want to talk to you all about the magnitude of what y’all just did. So to give you some idea, ABC on the splashdown coverage alone, 10 million people watched our network that day, just splash down. That’s not the launch, the lunar flyby. And I gotta tell you, one of those viewers was my daughter Ellie, who turned 4 during your mission. And she was mesmerized by what you all were doing. She wasn’t talking about her big bluey birthday party. She wasn’t talking about the gifts that she got. Every night I came home from JSE, she said, Daddy, Ellie go to space. She was infatuated. When you hear stuff like that and the amount of people that were interested in what you’ve done, has the gravity yet hit you about this mission? And you know, how has it changed you as well? You know, um, first I just wanna thank you for sharing that. That is wonderful to hear about your, your daughter. That’s awesome and thank her for that, you know, creating that story. We landed on Friday. Tomorrow will be one week, and I just was trying to live in *** little hole for one week, been off social media, not on the news, so no, I don’t know, but you know my kids have made it pretty clear, uh, my neighbors and you know it’s hard to live in *** bubble nowadays. I’m trying very hard, but, um, but you know I think it’s what what I’ve come to realize is we did what we said we were gonna do and now we’ve got to step out and and. And just face that reality and so that’s *** great thing, but I’ll, I’ll, I’ll figure it out tomorrow. Courtney started this by saying the crew is ready. I’m really not, but, but I will be next week. I, do you mind if I add something, please? I just, it’s the way you word it. I mean, I love your question, but you say what you guys did, what the four of you did, and we just don’t not see it that way, we should be rewording that question to what we did. That’s what this was. We just went up and did what we were gonna do. All we saw was *** camera. We didn’t have that connection with you. We lost that connection with Earth by and large, and so we just leaned into what we had. We leaned into each other and Mission Control, which is really all we had in our families *** couple of times, but we did that because we had been lifted up and supported to just go up there and be ourselves and just do our job, and we went into it thinking, you know, it’s not going to be perfect, but it’s going to be good enough. Seems like it was good enough. I’ll add *** little bit, just my personal perspective. When I got back as someone who doesn’t necessarily like attention, I don’t like my birthday, the birthday song being sung to me, any of that, my husband said that before I got back, he had *** conversation with my brothers and sisters, and they were like, who’s going to tell her? We didn’t know. And in fact, what, what we were told really through talking with *** couple of times with our families was that there was an impact, not necessarily the number of viewers or anything like that, but that there was *** positive impact that it was superseding any lines, any identities that people had. And when my husband looked me in the eye on that video call and said, no, really, you’ve made *** difference, it brought tears to my eyes and I said, that’s all we ever wanted. And I can tell you that the difference now is when we come before you now, we’ve done this together. We took your hearts with us and your hearts lifted our hearts. And now that we’ve done it, I think it’s easier to accept that there’s attention on the NASA teams, on the fact that we did it, you know, in the beginning 3 years ago, we were being celebrated for something that we hadn’t done and having put in the work and having seen our team’s successes, I think we’re ready to share in that inspiration and to celebrate it. OK, we’ll take 2 more here in the room and then head to our phone bridge. Kristen, go ahead. Hi, Kristen Fisher with The Endless Void and welcome home. It’s been such *** joy watching how much this mission has gotten people so excited about space. My question is *** little bit deep, so bear with me. When Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell was returning from the moon, he had an experience so profound that when he returned to Earth, he devoted the rest of his life to studying the nature of human consciousness, and it’s theme that all four of you touched on to varying degrees at some point during the mission. And so my question is, now that you’ve been back on Earth for just *** few days and had *** little bit of time to sit with it, do any of you feel as though you had an experience similar to what Mitchell described the sense of universal connectedness, and did you experience somehow ***, *** shift in consciousness somehow? Thanks. Yes. Chris, it’s ***, it’s ***, it’s *** great question. I, I’ll just, the only thing I can do is just share one quick story when I got back on the, on the ship. Um, I’m not, I’m not really *** religious person, but there was just no other avenue for me to, to explain anything or to experience anything, so I asked for the chaplain on the navy ship to just come visit us for *** minute, and when that man walked in, I’d never met him before in my life, but I saw the cross on his, on his collar and I just, I broke down in tears like. It’s very hard to fully grasp what we just went through and in these short, you just said it’s been *** week since we’ve been back, but it’s been *** week of medical testing, physical testing, doctors, science objectives. I would like, we have not had that decompression, we have not had that reflection. Time. So I’m basing this on what we saw. And when the when the sun eclipsed behind the moon, I think all four of us, I turned to Victor and I said, I don’t think humanity has evolved to the point of being able to comprehend what we’re looking at right now because it was otherworldly and it was amazing. Um, the only thing I would add is that, first of all, thank you for sharing that. That was *** really special moment. I was in the bed right across when the chaplain came in and Um, the only thing I would add is I am *** religious person, but everything else is the same. Um, it, it was, there is something in there and as we start to process, I’ll, I’ll have to tell you next week, but I haven’t had *** chance to really unpack it all yet. All right, we’ll take one more here in the room and then head over to our phone bridge. Yeah, maybe not as deep, but, but connected, uh, uh, Keith Garvin with KPRC2 here in Houston, uh, thank you so much for taking us on your journey and so, so glad that you’re home. You know, with the technology that we have today and what we can do with videos and pictures and social media, it can still be very. Very hard for one to convey exactly what they’re seeing to to everyone else. What is the most remarkable or one of the most remarkable experiences that that you all had that just couldn’t be fully properly conveyed through pictures and video, and that’s for any of you. Uh, I can start. I, I was going to answer Kristen’s question *** little bit too, and I think these tie together. I, I’ve been trying to find words for it. I don’t really have it yet, but um, we just saw so many amazing things when people ask what’s the most amazing one, and it’s, you can’t pick one. There’s just so many amazing experiences we had, but overall where I keep coming back to is what kept grabbing my attention when the lighting was right and we were looking out the window is that I kept seeing this like depth to. I guess the galaxy, you know, for what we were visually observing out there, this depth to the galaxy that I just had never experienced before, and it’s not that I could tell which stars were really closer and further because it has to do with how bright they are, but because of how bright they are and their differences, they look like you can tell where they are in 3D. That was mind blowing for me. And then you see the same thing with the moon and the Earth. You’re viewing them from this new perspective, but this perspective with like 3 dimensional depth. And I mean I’ve heard Christina talk about this *** lot and we’re all kind of struck by these things that make us feel small and that the sense I had was the sense of of fragility and feeling small infinitesimally small, but yet this very powerful feeling as *** human being, like as *** group. And that is what to me is what I would try to share. I saw it in all these sites over and over again. I kept seeing that same thing and that same feeling, small and powerless but yet powerful together. Beautiful. OK, we’ll head over to our phone bridge. Our next question is from Nell Greenfield with NPR. Hey, welcome back, everybody. Tell me about your sleep. Have you been having any dreams of the moon, and if so, what have the dreams been like? I can take this one. I, I’ve got *** couple of things I can say on that. One, I’ve been sleeping great since we got back. We are tired, so I think our bodies are ready to accept any time zone of sleep that we offered it. And what I’ve noticed, which is completely different from my first flight and surprisingly so since my first flight was so long, is every time I’ve been waking up or in the first few days, I thought I was floating. I truly thought I was floating and I had. To convince myself I wasn’t. And even after 328 days in space on my previous mission, I never did the thing where you, you think something will float in front of you. I’ve done that on this return for some reason. I, I put *** shirt in the air and it went. It actually surprised me and so that’s been the real thing, which I’ve welcomed because space sleep is the best sleep ever. It’s so peaceful, it’s so comfortable, and to have *** little bit of that after our mission was over so quickly has been really special. Our next question, I’ll just tell *** little funny thing because I think you’ll get *** kick out of it. I sleep *** lot better now because I don’t have Reed underneath me kicking me. Oh come on. Oh, we should talk about our first night of sleep on the ship where we were about 8 ft apart in the beds in the med bay and it felt way too far. Um, that was not OK. I heard Christina say, Hey, can we open up these curtains and pull all the beds together because you guys are way too far away. OK, our next question is from Lauren Grush with Bloomberg. Hi, so good to talk to all of you and congratulations on *** successful mission. Obviously from our perspective it smooth flight, but there were various moments where sensor readings would indicate an issue. There’s also an issue with extra leaking from the valves on the helium pressure system that was brought up *** few times. I’m wondering if there were any moments throughout the mission where you felt concerned from *** safety standpoint, or did you feel like it was fairly smooth from your perspective? I might be taking up. Um, Well, I, I might be *** bit more dramatic than some of my crewmates, so usually they do *** good job of keeping the boy with *** lot of hyperbole grounded, but when you look down at your display and you can see 212,000 miles and the miles are increasing, uh, I mean that your awareness is heightened the whole time. I, I feel like it was. I was looking at all, all 4 of us. I was looking at myself reflecting as well every day, and I was just looking for signs of agitation or signs of stress or signs of anxiety or tension. In fact, I think one day we were in the med kit and we found some medication for, for that purpose and we’re like, wow, I, I just can’t even imagine taking that. Like we were just, we were really good. We were really, really good and really supportive of each other, but you always know in the back of your head that something could go wrong, and I think that just builds *** little bit of anxiety and you’re right, we did have uh. We had some pressure leaking uh through our PCA assembly which I’m sure we’ll we’ll talk more about in postflight. We had some vent line issues on the toilet that were that were *** little bit problematic for us on the primary vent line, um, and then we had *** few cautions and warnings that came up from time to time. And, and those always, they always get your attention. We had *** smoke detector go off on the next to last day. I mean, you want to get somebody’s attention really quick? Make, make the fire alarm go off on your spacecraft when you’re still about 80,000 miles from home, um, and that, that starts off an automated sequence of shutting down the ventilation and the power system and, and that was, it was tense. It wasn’t scary, but it was tense for *** few minutes until we got things reconfigured. Um, but the thing that we, we drilled into our heads before we launched is no fast hands. Let’s, let’s evaluate this machine. Let’s see what the machine is telling us. Let’s see what Houston is telling us, and then let’s come to an integrated decision. But nothing had to happen quick and this, this machine. I was talking to our program manager last night on the phone for just *** minute, Howard Hugh, and I like there are always things we need to improve, always there are ways we need to do better living in space. There’s ways this machine needs to be improved, but I, my own personal opinion, they could put the Artemis 3 Orion on the Space Launch System tomorrow and launch it, and the crew would be in great shape. So this vehicle really handled very well. All right. Next up, we are going to head over to the Canadian Space Agency for 2 questions. Yeah, hi, Sarah Levitt from CBC News. *** question for Jeremy. I wanted to ask about if you’ve had *** chance to take out the garbage since your wife was griping about chores while you were away, but I have *** more serious question. Uh, you spoke in your post, uh, splashdown remarks about, uh, gratitude, joy, and love, and I know Reed had said that there hasn’t been *** lot that has sunk in yet, but I wondered if there were other emotions that have come to you since, uh, since seeing Earth the way you did, since seeing the moon being the four sets of eyes that have only ever seen the far side of the moon. I think what I’ve reflected on and Reed covered in his opening remarks is I’ve found it really refreshing to find out how people have followed the mission and been creative with the mission, and there’s lots of funny stuff online and that really resonates with me *** lot and it just reinforces something I already knew, but you know humans are just great people in general. We don’t always do great things. We’re not always in our integrity. But our default is to be good and to be good to one another, and what we saw once we’ve gotten back *** little bit, so I haven’t seen *** lot yet, but I’ve seen *** bit, and what I’ve seen has brought me more joy but more hope for our future, and I just can’t wait to see what we do with it next. OK, we should have one more question from CSA. Hi, my name is Elizalard. I’m from Radio Canada, French CBC in Montreal. I have *** question for Jeremy and son Francais. Uh, reservoir, the quefasa ala foie psychologic physi res physique psychologic. Um, physical and, uh, psychological changes from the mission, uh, moi, uh, the Chamo physique pas and grand shows mem on *** rivedles pass *** rela *** uh sassembon shows *** kebab the the passela ion is just fema mon trabai alo uh sembon shows uh um. *** locote sennaparemonch lemoyenje vou lela monde novill messa reinforce sa beaucoup um je lance avec la lapoin devou la labraionpo humanity la proci shows contra conti *** trava de sous *** vou lata de lapoin de vous de la loon. Uh, reforce set boo set objective for humanity aloge and and nouveau, uh, uh, desire de tra uh vec lemondepo crea purnuremon port. AOC um men poke. Yoko. Promp the ground risk at the ground bene. Uh, I was just saying, you know, psychologically, really sort of what I was talking about before is that it hasn’t changed my worldview so much as it’s reinforced just the need for us to collaborate on this planet and like Christina said in her remarks when we got back, I mean we really are *** crew and that really resonates with us and you just see it, seeing is believing. All right, we’ll take our next few questions here in the room. Go ahead. Hi, my name is McKenna Earnhardt, and I’m with Fox 26. My question would be, um, Victor, when we, I was watching you as y’all were watching the video of y’all coming back down, and I heard you say, I felt that, or I saw you say, say that, what were you feeling when you come from deeper in space than we’ve ever been to then you can see the ocean again? What did you feel? What was your body telling you? Thank you. Great question. And I’ll, I’ll keep my face quiet more next time. No, the, uh, moment, well, first of all, all of the things that was *** very intense 13 minutes and 36 seconds. Um, That moment was when the drogues released and then the uh pilot shoots and the mains came out. Uh, in Dragon, I’ve experienced *** similar entry, and in Dragon the drogue shoots don’t release the same way in the same sequencing, and so I don’t remember feeling, you know, back to free fall from having drag or G on the vehicle. I think those actually are still connected to the vehicle as the main chutes come out. On that vehicle, I remember feeling the yo yo though as the parachutes were breathing. I could feel that 30 20 ft moving up and down. But when the drugs cut away, we went back, back to free fall and watching that on the video felt almost the same way it felt in the video. I, it or in, in the vehicle. I would tell you I’ve never been base jumping. I’ve never been skydiving, but if you dove off *** skydiver, ***, *** skyscraper backwards, that’s what it felt like for 5 seconds, and then the mains, the, the pilots in the mains came out and it was, it was glorious. OK, we’ll take our next question right here. Go ahead. Hey guys, I saw Christina posted you brought some, uh, Super Bowl confetti from the Eagles up there with you. I’m just curious if anybody else brought anything sports related or something that you absolutely had to take up with you. Yeah. So, from *** general sense, uh, we, we all do get *** very small allocation, uh, mass allocation, and on this vehicle it’s very small, um, so we were just trying to think of, of things we could take like I, I took *** couple of notes from friends and things that I had written down, uh, some, some great quotes, um, and then I, I just on my way out of my house I just grabbed this bracelet which my daughter had made for me *** couple of years ago. I was just like I need something that I can just wear and take and oddly enough, um, like that was the, it was the coolest thing for me to just be grounded every night when I would get my sleeping bag and I would see this thing and it’s just like it’s that connection to home, to family, and uh and to, you know, to my daughters and that was, that was an accident and it was *** hugely success. Successful thing for me. It really helped me stay grounded on that mission. So those things can come out of nowhere, uh, things that were so important to you when you launched can be less important in space, and things that were just an afterthought in space can become the absolute most important thing that you possibly that you can possibly take. So I think overall we did *** pretty good job with that, and I, I’ve said it before, but just listening to them. Communicate with their families on those tiny little moments that we got to communicate with our families, we each got two chances to call, and for me that’s one of the most lasting impacts of this mission was listening to your friend and crewmate go into this other world with this headset on for 15 minutes and giggle and laugh and every one of us cried. I mean nobody didn’t get through those things without crying and uh and then you would take those headphones off at the end and it was like coming back into *** different universe when you would come out of that family conference and it just reminded you how important that is right there. OK, we’ll take one more here in the room and then head to our phone bridge. Go ahead. Uh, hi guys. Uh, welcome back. Uh, glad to hear that you’ve been, uh, sleeping well. Uh, this is Jishnu Nayer with the Houston Business Journal, and this question is for all of you coming actually from *** group of our younger readers. Um, one thing I noticed during the 10 days that you guys were up in space is that we got so many, uh, emails, DMs, notes, whatever from, from younger. Folks expressing how cool it was and how they or their little brothers or their sons or daughters, uh, could, you know, get started and we heard from leadership on Friday as you guys were, you know, reentering, uh, we heard from leadership that NASA wants to be doing these missions more often. They want to be doing them faster and they want to be getting humans to the moon and, and, and beyond hopefully. Uh, and so from, you know, some of the first people to actually have done it in, uh, quite *** while, what’s one piece of advice maybe that, uh, maybe each of you could give to these, uh, younger folks who are looking skywards now? You want to just go right down the line? I, I would say the big thing for me, and we saw it in this mission is, uh, I think we’re starting, we’re starting to lose scope as, as *** society that you do have to go do things like you have to go do really hard, really challenging things, and you have to go move the needle, and that actually means like bending metal and fueling rockets or that means inventing *** new way to do surgery, but we have got to get our hands out there and engaged. Our hands and our minds have got to be engaged. I think you know there’s *** there’s *** professional path that folks are going to take to get into whatever profession and then you know that’s kind of *** springboard to get this job. This is no one’s first job it’s not an entry level thing, but I would encourage them to start now before they even are on that journey to really get comfortable asking questions and then listening. To their peers but also to their mentors, I think that has been *** game changer for all of us. There’s so much to know in this business and none of us knows it all. Uh, yes, it is my call sign, but I do not know everything, and we, we have to rely on the, the wisdom of the village so much that it needs to be *** part of, it needs to be unconscious. You need to be unconsciously competent at. Asking *** question or when people are just having *** conversation that impacts something you need to know to just savor it, take it in, and, and, and make it *** part of what you believe, the three things I’ve always encouraged young people to do, I think still apply to, to be gritty or resilient, to be *** lifelong learner, and to be *** good teammate. so good. I love everything I’ve heard. The three things that I usually say, and I don’t think they’ve changed, are find your fulfillment. I used to say find your passion, but for me it’s changed to find what you can do the slowest for the longest and still absolutely love it and go in that direction, do what scares you. The path of least resistance isn’t usually the path that will give the most back to the world and give you the most sense of courage and confidence, and finally support those around you. The benefits that compound when you support those around you and they support you back are just immeasurable. Maybe the one I’ll emphasize is just follow the example that people saw here. Don’t do it alone and share what you’re trying to accomplish with others because you need the support of others to do big things. And so share your goals, be brave enough to share them, and then you’ll be surprised how people surround you and lift you up to accomplish them. All right, we’ll head over to our phone bridge. Our next question is from Andrea with the Houston Chronicle. Hi, I’d like to ask about mental health. You know, it was *** very busy mission. How are you able to take care of yourself, you know, get some rest and some me time when you guys are sharing just that small area throughout the mission? Thanks. There wasn’t much me time. There wasn’t, uh, you know, we have sprinkled this in throughout other topics, but everything we did up there was *** 4 person activity minimum everything, how we ate, slept, flew the vehicle, and, um, some of it was on purpose, *** lot of it we realized real time when Jeremy exercised, we were all exercising. It was *** team effort, uh, to the last, you know, period and so I just, just want to emphasize that that we, we actually, I think the me space was maybe *** myth that 15 minute check out when you’re talking to your family, it did feel like being teleported out of the vehicle, but you teleported right back and so um we embraced that that was *** part of it though that was *** facet, *** flavor, an ingredient of how we flew the mission and instead of trying to avoid it. I, I don’t know. I’m speaking for us and we also don’t do that often, but I would say from the proof in that pudding, we leaned into it and, and used it as *** way to get through instead of trying to fight it the whole time. Yeah. Yeah, I think the one thing I want to add is just we have tried over the last 3 years to be very good at communicating, which is what you just said. But just, just if, if you have *** bad night of sleep or if something is angering you or if something is off in your balance, just talking about that to the other 3 crew members just. Know where you are, where you’re coming from today, and that it’s not directed at them, and they can help you out and I don’t know, as soon as you have the courage to kind of express that to *** couple of friends, all of *** sudden your friends are in it right alongside with you and so we, we really got exceptionally good at communicating. I didn’t think we would get as exceptionally good at like crawling all over each other for 10 days, but we did get good at that too. Um, it’s tight up there, but, uh, but we, we really communicated extremely well on this mission from day 1 till day 10 and now even now. OK, we’ll take our next question from Josh with Space.com. Cool. Josh, if we’re, if you’re talking, we can’t hear you. Courtney, while we wait, can I make one other comment? I just wanted to add, um, because you know folks have followed. I wanna go back and add one piece to this previous question. Thank you for asking about mental health. It is so important. We have professional help as well. We have *** team of operational psychologists and psychiatrists that help us skill up to be ready to to accomplish things like this. And so we did not just do that on our own. We have professional help just like we do simulations of entry and ascent launch. Uh, we have folks that help us, uh, navigate the challenges of we call it behavioral health and performance, but of mental and team preparation. Yeah, great, great point. OK, we’ll head over to Alicia with Mashable. Um, before 2025, NASA repeatedly stated that the first Artemis moon landing would see the first woman and the first person of color on the moon. That language has since been removed from agency materials. I’d like to ask each one of you, do you believe NASA should still adhere to that original commitment for the first landing mission, and why? It’s *** good, it’s *** good question. Yeah, it’s *** great question. Our understanding of that statement was basically that the Artemis campaign as *** whole will usher in an era where that is true and that it would happen naturally because our astronaut corps, because of decisions we made collectively decades ago, represents our entire country. and our entire world in many ways. We’re proud of that. We’re proud that the people in our core achieve excellence and strive for excellence in all the same ways. And the fact is you don’t have to try too hard to make that come true, to make that be the reality of this mission. You’d actually have to try harder. To not make that be true in the astronaut corps that we have, and I do think that’s something to celebrate that decades ago we made the decision that everyone who has *** dream gets to work equally hard to achieve that dream and that if we’re not going for all and by all, we aren’t answering humanity’s call to explore, which is what we do here. Awesome, perfect. All right, our next question is from Claire Cameron with Scientific American. Literally Hi there. I just wanted to ask *** little bit more about, you know, some of the challenges that y’all face on the spacecraft, and particularly, you know, *** lot of our readers were particularly interested in the toilet problems. I just wondered if you could speak to that and if there’s anything that you wish was different on the capsule or had been better or improved. I do not mind starting this. We probably all want to throw *** little bit in. Um, I just want to say 100% point blank, that was *** wonderful toilet. The toilet worked great. Where we had an issue, and it was, it was an issue for sure, is that our primary vent line, which takes, you know, when you go to the bathroom at the end of doing that, you flush the toilet. The toilet flushed just fine, but then when the liquid went out the bottom of the toilet, it got clogged up in our vent line and our tank can only hold about. You know, maybe, maybe I’m guessing like under 10 urination events, I guess that tank can hold, and then it’s got to be dumped. And for the 1st 2 days of the mission, it was fun to watch that thing get dumped. I mean that is an interesting thing to see out the window. It’s just like *** billion little tiny flecks of ice heading out into deep space. But that primary vent line got clogged or gunked or we’ll wait and see exactly what the technical reason was, and that put *** limitation on us. So I definitely for those great engineers that made that toilet, I don’t want them hanging their head low. They should hang it very high. It was it was *** great piece of gear. And then what do we, what do we learn? Like there’s always things we need to improve. I think the thing. Just speaking for myself, the thing that really surprised me on this mission was how well the spacecraft handled and how well the, the machine supported the 4 humans on board. Uh, we were *** little cold the 1st 2 days. They warmed it up. They like, they fixed everything that we asked, um. The thing that we need to probably work on for the next mission is now we know the things that we didn’t know before we launched. Like when you want to go into *** bag and get lunch, but you got to dig through 1000 different things to get to lunch, it makes it really hard and cumbersome to eat on *** very busy day. There are different ways that we could manage the. during workout like we have learned all these little nuances that we can make Artemis 345, just bring the gains down on those things so that they can focus, which we’ve always said on their task, rendezvousing *** spacecraft in orbit, getting on the lunar surface and building *** sustainable presence on the on the moon. Like we hold the key to that lock and we’ve already started debriefing so that they don’t have to worry about that lock. Our next question is from Robert Perlman with CollectSpace.com. Thank you, and let me say thank you first for the most amazing days following your journey. Uh, my question is for all of you. If the US Postal Service wanted to repeat Apollo 8 history and issue *** stamp based on just one photograph that you returned from your mission, what one photo would you choose and who among you took it? The four of us hugging where his face is hanging off the bottom, that’s the stamp I wore, the country does not need that. Yeah, we need it. I, you know, I, I think something that we all feel and we try to share is how much we wanna reflect back to you all how we did this, not we as *** crew, we as countries and, and, and as humans did this. And so what popped into my head as you’re asking that is the picture of the Earth as we started to go farther from the Earth and we’ve got this beautiful one where you can see the northern lights because. I, I, when we were getting really close to the moon talking about looking at you and how beautiful Earth is, that represents how far we were, but it shows you that’s, I cannot overstress that like we, we did this together and so that picture. To me is at least representative of of *** lot for this mission. I also haven’t looked through many of the pictures. Like I said, I’ve been in my hole for almost *** week and uh and we are very intentionally not trying to take individual photo credit for things, but may I, can I share that specific one? He took that picture and he worked really hard at he captured *** lot of things that we did not think we would be able to get on film and so that picture was Reed Wiseman and it was not the first try. He made the adjustments to the camera and and got *** great picture, um, so yeah, congrats, it was awesome. It is awesome. Thank you. All right, we’ll head back here in the room, right here in the middle. Thank you, uh, Mark Kirkman with NSF, um, with the exception of Rise, uh, Reed was kind enough to let all of you manhandle the spacecraft, but I’d like to, I guess, focus in mostly on Reed and I, um, how you sounded like you were in the groove when you were doing that Proxos demo. I mean, absolutely professional, but it sounded like test pilot heaven from, from us listening to it. How would you characterize how the spacecraft handled versus how you would compare it to the simulator and also how would you compare it to *** dragon? And then I have to ask, do y’all have *** Mach 34-ish patch yet? Oh man, you’re hitting all the things that I’m loving. So, uh, we’ve used joy *** lot, so I’m gonna say test pilot joy. Test pilot heaven feels good as well, but It, I mean, first of all, it’s an immense privilege to fly *** spaceship that just at all and to fly *** new spaceship is kind of an unreal privilege and I’m really glad we all got to fly it that that is probably the most important thing. You have *** perspective, uh, across this really represents the perspectives in the astronaut office and so that really matters. We give numbers as handling rating, handling qualities and ratings, but the most important thing in in handling qualities are the pilot comments and so you’ve got comments from an entire crew. It flew better than the sim in all areas. I think that’s probably the easiest way to say it and it was just the integration of the full thing, the crew being there, seeing the same actual, you know, we have windows in the simulator, but there are screens, individual computer screens, so we see the same thing because it’s trying to simulate parallax, but it means we’re looking at actually different images and so we’re trying to call out measure. on something that is not the same thing. This camera was showing us the same thing, and Christina took *** video and pictures of our upper stage and I didn’t see it for several hours, maybe days after and it blew me away. I was like wow, that, that was right out the window the whole time. um, the training worked the team that came up with that plan was fantastic. And I owe them some handling qualities ratings. I haven’t filled out that that survey yet, so it’s coming, it’s coming, but it, it flew like *** dream, and I’m really glad everybody got to fly it. I want, I wanna add one thing and then I’m gonna throw Jeremy directly under the bus, um, but one thing that I wanna just say really more to the NASA team than to the, to the media is. That first day was, that was *** daunting first day and we were looking ahead of that day. All 4 of us knew how to do Rendezvous and Proxopp’s demo just in case somebody had motion sickness or was, was out of the picture, um, but it really reminded me that when you are extremely highly trained and very prepared, you can go knock that thing out. I mean, we, this crew went and knocked out Rendezvous and Proxop’s demonstration. I would, I mean, I haven’t looked at the tape, but it felt flawless on board and I was running procedures. He was flying the spacecraft. Jeremy and Christina were watching the interim cryogenic propulsion stage out the window and mapping our distance to that the entire way in, and it was just like clockwork, clockwork, clockwork, and we had just gotten to space and he’s never been in space before. And so when you sit, you can wring your hands forever, go, no, we shouldn’t do this to the crew, there’s no way they’re gonna be ready, they’re gonna be tired, they’re gonna be sick, they’re not gonna want to do this, man, train them and set them loose and we can go do that thing. And then leading into the Prox ops demo, you just got to tell the IPSF story because I love that story. In the simulations, we were, we were all worried about, you know, what if we don’t separate. There’s *** few procedures you have to run. There’s *** couple of different flavors of this and trying to tell whether you’ve separated and the camera views, etc. etc. And then when it came right down to it, we’re floating there, we’re waiting for separation, and all of *** sudden bang, *** loud bang, we’re all pinned to the floor. We all looked at each other like, well, I guess we separated. Or it exploded. I think Jeremy Charney’s like, I think we just got ejected off of that thing. It was, it was the biggest force we felt on the whole mission. Those are some legitimate spring pushers. Yeah, thanks. It’s in work. The, the patch is in work. We, uh, the number that we saw on the displays, and you know I, I was very in tune with what Orion thinks it’s going to do, it was 38.8, 38.89 was the mock, and so, well, *** patch is in work, but it depends on how you measure that number. It’s actually challenging to measure from space. So we, there will be, there will be *** new one coming out when we figure it out. We’ll take our next question from Eric. Go ahead. Uh, Eric Berger, Ars Technica, congratulations on *** great mission. It was really fun to follow. Um, question for when you were flying by the moon. Now, *** couple weeks before you guys launched, NASA had this ignition event in DC where they talked about the moon base. And I’m just wondering, knowing how difficult it was for you for this mission, all it entailed the training, um, the launch, and, and getting out there to the moon was, was pretty rigorous endeavor, how realistic are you feeling about like humans actually going to the moon, going down to the surface, putting down roots there, staying and actually establishing some kind of semi-permanent settlement, you know, doing something quite different than we did in the 1960s with Apollo. Well, I think we probably haven’t talked about this exactly as *** crew. We talked about how that ignition event made us feel prior to the mission, which was that it pumped us up. We were very much lifted up by the notion that we would get to contribute to astronauts doing this all over again much sooner than we thought that we were going to be focused on the moon base on surface operations, and I would say if nothing else we are feeling. Even more excited and just ready to take that on as an agency. *** couple of things contribute to that. One is how well the team and the spacecraft took care of us. We had things on this mission that you might think weren’t really necessary in just *** quick shot to the moon, but we made it happen. We exercised along the way. Um, it is *** great example. When we got back to Earth, we all within 1 or 2 days. In surface spacewalk suits doing surface geology tasks and doing them well and able to complete an entire battery of very challenging surface tasks in *** in *** spacewalking spacesuit for surface missions. There’s just so many examples where we’ve shown that we can, all of the analysis that we do prior to missions, all of the talking that we do, all of the. It’s all of the, just coming up with every possible operational workaround for anything you might encounter, we can do that and we do. So we figure out all these things that could go wrong, all the extra resources it’s going to take to do these things that sound completely outlandish and impossible right now, but the truth is accomplishing the near impossible is exactly what we do and what we just showed that we can do. I don’t really want to add anything to that because that was so perfect. Uh, I, I’m gonna say one last little thing which is I did have *** little weird technical epiphany, Eric, while we were out there, which was we just went like 250,000 miles away and I’m telling you right now, if we had *** first flight lander on board that thing, I know at least 3 of my crewmates would have been in it trying to land on the moon. Like the, the jump, when you think about Apollo. Apollo 8 went around the moon, 9 stayed in Leo, 10 almost landed on the moon, and I’ve talked to *** few of those gentlemen in the past, and they said if they had enough fuel they would have done it. It is, it’s not, oh, I’m gonna eat these words. It’s not the leap I thought it was. Once we’re around the moon, we’re in the vacuum of space, we got *** 6ed off vehicle that’s handling great. If you had given us the keys to the lander, we would have taken it down and landed on the moon. It is not the leap I thought it was. It’s going to be extremely technically challenging, but this team needs to show up every day knowing it is absolutely doable and it’s, it’s doable soon. This mission taught me that the unknown is way scarier than the known. Every single time we accomplished *** mission test objective, we all looked at each other. And we’re like, that actually went pretty well. That was actually not necessarily easy because it took *** ton of work, but it was easy to accomplish as *** team because we had put in the work. We know how to put in the work to make it accomplishable when the time comes. Awesome. I think Eric, I’d like to add something that I think you’re pulling out too is, you know, I agree with everything that was said. We, we. To be willing to accept *** little more risk than we were willing to accept in the past and to just trust that we will figure it out in real time. We’re not going to be able to pound everything flat before we go. We’re going to have to trust each other and crews and mission control to work through real problems, and it was very evident to us out there that this went really smoothly, super smoothly. I’m not surprised, an extraordinary team. *** lot of work was done in advance, but it was also very clear to us that it could get pretty bumpy. And uh whoever is going out there to do those things gotta understand it could get real bumpy real fast and it has to be ready to take that on. Hey, since everybody spoke, I’m gonna just say one thing, uh, Eric, it was awesome to hear you start this off by saying something was fun. Thanks. OK, we’ll take one more question here in the room and then head to our phone bridge. Mark, go ahead. That’s great. Uh, Mark Carro with the Aviation Week in Space Technology. Awesome. Um, how much longer will you be in post-mission Johnson care and have you found that to be *** valuable part of the mission. That’s *** good question. So you know the program we use for flying to and from the International Space Station is, is kind of the cut and paste what we started with and then we whittled it away and tried to make it appropriate for this mission duration. So there is *** dedicated two week period of medical checks, science collection, and strength and conditioning, rehabilitation, readaptation, and then. You know there’s out to 4 months where we’re going to do the, the public affairs and appearance events. There’s about *** 45 day cutover where we’re actually the, the person we work for will change. So they’re actually, there’s *** sort of *** gradual redeployment or *** gradual move out of the, the postflight, but it started. Off with the same basic plan that we use for ISS knowing that this is *** short mission so we may not need reconditioning for 30 or 45 days like I did post ISS and uh we’ve just been trying to tailor it. One reason though that it’s really important, I mean I felt like *** million bucks on Friday, so today I’m I’m up to 16 bucks. But it’s important for us to run these processes out because we are still making changes and learning ways that we’re going to support the 30 and 45 day missions of Artemis 345 and so it’s really important for us to keep practicing, keeping our heads in the game. All right, we will head back to our phone bridge. Josh with Space.com. Let’s try this again. Hi Josh Dinner Space.com. Hope you can hear me this time. Can y’all hear me this time? Hello. Yes, we have we have you loud and clear. Oh, excellent. Alright, so I’m curious, uh, as you have each been looking for the words to relay this experience to your family and friends and colleagues since your return, uh, you know, everyone has their own perspective of viewing the narration of their story, uh, and I’m wondering once Hollywood gets *** hold of this story and makes the Artemis 2 movie that I’m sure will inevitably be made. What part of this mission needs to be told, uh, You know, in the most crucial, specific way possible, what, what part of this mission tells the story that Hollywood needs to get right? I would just start by saying *** movie wouldn’t do it justice. It has to be *** series. There’s so much to talk about. OK, we will take our next question from, oh, wait, wait, we gotta, we gotta to honor that one *** little. Just give us *** second, Courtney. I guess the thing that might be hardest to convey no matter what the platform would be how much it meant to us to bring everyone along with us and how much it meant to us to hear that the mission had an impact. I cannot overstate how important that was to us. It was every bit as important as accomplishing the technical goals and being there for our NASA teammates was to make this the world’s mission and for it to have *** positive impact on as much of the world as possible. All right, our next question is from Marsha Dunn with the Associated Press. Oh hi. Welcome back. I’ll read for you please. I was looking for *** report card on the heat shield following re-entry. What are you hearing on how it fared? Was there very much damage? Thanks. It’s *** great question. It’s, you know, as, as, for sure we need to see what NASA says on the data. We have got to, they are going to do. To this heat shield what they did to Artemis I, and we’re going to find tooth comb every single, not even every molecule, probably every atom on this heat shield, but we, the four of us, uh, when we got off the navy ship, the USS John P. Murtha, we were getting ready to get on the helicopters, and I think we all kind of agreed that we heard that. Integrity was in the well deck there and we did not want to, we did not feel right leaving that ship without doing two things. Number 1, we wanted to see our spacecraft. We wanted to go look at that spacecraft. And number 2, there was *** gentleman who led the Charlos investigation team after Artemis I, *** single named Luis, but he, he managed *** great team. And we heard he was on the ship and we just, I needed to hug that man. I needed to go see that man and thank him because the data that they pulled from Artemis I, I think Artemis I is probably the most studied heat shield in the history of spaceflight, for sure the history of human spaceflight, maybe the shuttle in its early days. I don’t. know, but they figured out what was wrong with that heat shield. They determined the root cause of that heat shield, and then they left it up to NASA to decide, are we going to fly *** different heat shield or are we going to change the trajectory and fly as is? And they gave us, NASA, the options to do what we thought was right. And we modified our trajectory. We came in with what’s called *** horizontal target line somewhere around 1700 nautical miles. We were originally like out of 2300 and we were going to float through the atmosphere for *** long time, but that was where the Artemis I heat shield was seeing problems. So we came in fast and we came in hot, and I will tell you, looking out the window that whole way in. Um, it was *** smooth ride. It was *** very smooth ride. I think Ike and I maybe saw two moments of *** touch of char loss. Certainly when we went up to the vehicle, there was *** little bit of char loss on what’s called the shoulder, which is kind of where the heat shield meets the structure of the cone shape of the of the spacecraft. But the bottom, we leaned under and looked at the bottom of that thing, and for 4 humans just looking at *** heat shield, it looked wonderful to us. It looked great, and that ride in, that ride in was really amazing. All right, we’ll take another question on the phone bridge from Anthony Leon with Spectrum News. Hello, uh, welcome back. Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions today. Uh, we touched on *** little about the future missions. What piece of advice do you each have for the future Armis crew who will land on the moon again? Thank you. Um, man, I’m taking up *** lot of CO2 today. Uh, I’ll keep this short. You, you have got to invest in each other. That’s the number one thing I would say. After that I would tell them to, well, something that was shared with us from the crude flight test, the Boeing CFT crew, ask more questions. That’s *** great one, yeah. I would say in addition to those, remember that you are part of *** team. Something that we do well is we always thank our teams for what they’ve done and something I always add to that is congratulations because. To say thank you sometimes to me seems like there’s an assumption there that we’re the one that did it and everyone else supported, but that’s not how I see it. I see it as we all are 100% teammates. If anything, we did the least. And congratulations. Say that every day to your teams, your teammates. You’re probably the last one that got added to this team. That’s *** great answer. Yeah, that’s *** tough one to follow. I probably, if I had to give them some different advice, I’d pivot back to the technical and just that really getting to know the parts of your spacecraft that you could end up alone. We thought *** lot, this crew, we spent *** lot of time thinking about what if we don’t have mission control and what are the critical things to keep us going long enough to get back in touch with mission control, and that’s, I think that always needs to be an area of focus. Right. OK, we have time for one more question in the room. If I could get *** raise of hands. Erin, Hi, Aaron Winnick Anthony for CBS Mission Unstoppable. For Christina, he said advice for the crew as *** whole, but for the astronaut that’s selected for them to be the first woman to walk on the moon, do you have any specific lessons learned or advice to pass along to them? For me, I think the biggest word about all of the superlatives that you’re going to encounter, all of the things that you’re going to be asked to do, react to, be *** part of, contribute to is it’s humbling. And if you remember that being part of *** team is your main goal and the. The main thing that that you put ahead of everything else, that when the world tries to make the accomplishment something different than what it really is, which is *** team accomplishment, you will know and the things that you say will reflect how you really see it. And it’s beautiful. All right, that is all the time we have for today. Thank you to the Artemis 2 crew for your time today and for such an inspiring mission, and thank you to our media for your continued interest in NASA’s Artemis 2 mission. We’ll see you next time.
Advertisement
Diving off ‘a skyscraper backwards’: Artemis II astronauts describe their historic mission
The four Artemis II astronauts, fresh off a bold and risky mission that captured the hearts of a world in tumult, took questions on Thursday for the first time since their return. The crew — including NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — has been back on Earth for one week after a history-making, slingshot trip around the moon. They’ve found themselves newly minted celebrities.“When we came home, we were shocked at the global outpouring of support, of pride, of ownership of this mission,” Wiseman said Thursday. “That’s what the four of us wanted. We wanted to go out and try to do something that would bring the world together.”The 10-day mission marked the first time astronauts have traveled to the moon since the final Apollo flight in 1972. The crew also ventured deeper into space than any human before, surpassing the Apollo 13 record set in 1970.Last week, the crew returned to Earth, enduring the jarring moment of reentry — the point at which the astronauts hit Earth’s thick inner atmosphere while their capsule was still traveling more than 30 times the speed of sound.Glover described it as a visceral experience, having been stunned by the sound of parachutes deploying after the Orion capsule plummeted through the air and experienced a six-minute communications blackout due to plasma created by the sheer speed at which their vehicle was moving.“If you dove off … a skyscraper backwards, that’s what it felt like for five seconds,” Glover said, referring to the moment the capsule went into free fall.The crew was also candid about the unusual feelings conjured by watching your home planet disappear as you venture so far into space.“When you look down at your display, and you see 212,000 miles, and the miles are increasing… your awareness is heightened the whole time,” said Wiseman.“I was looking at myself — reflecting as well every day — and I was just looking for signs of agitation, or signs of stress, or signs of anxiety or tension,” he said. “One day, we were in the med kit, and we found some medication” for stress and anxiety.“We were like, well, I just can’t even imagine taking that,” Wiseman said.But mental health challenges were an indelible part of the experience, Glover noted.“It is so important,” he said. “We have a team of operational psychologists and psychiatrists that help us skill up to be ready to accomplish things like this, and so we did not just do that on our own.”Glover, Koch, Hansen and Wiseman captured striking images of the moon during their seven-hour flyby of the lunar surface, which occurred on the sixth day of their mission.Already taking pop culture by storm, their journey and unprecedented glimpse of the moon’s far side was as captivating to the public as it was valuable for science, according to NASA.After years of training together and more than a week spent in space, the astronauts describe their relationship as more than crewmates. They are brothers and sisters, they have said, forever bonded by the trials and triumphs of their adventure — which included living in tight quarters aboard their 16.5-foot-wide Orion spacecraft, grappling with a broken toilet, and experiencing what it’s like to glance back at Earth from the lonely confines of a spacecraft devoid of radio communications more than a quarter million miles away.“That’s the closest four humans can be and not be a family,” Wiseman said Thursday during opening remarks.
The four Artemis II astronauts, fresh off a bold and risky mission that captured the hearts of a world in tumult, took questions on Thursday for the first time since their return.
The crew — including NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — has been back on Earth for one week after a history-making, slingshot trip around the moon. They’ve found themselves newly minted celebrities.
Advertisement
“When we came home, we were shocked at the global outpouring of support, of pride, of ownership of this mission,” Wiseman said Thursday. “That’s what the four of us wanted. We wanted to go out and try to do something that would bring the world together.”
The 10-day mission marked the first time astronauts have traveled to the moon since the final Apollo flight in 1972. The crew also ventured deeper into space than any human before, surpassing the Apollo 13 record set in 1970.
Last week, the crew returned to Earth, enduring the jarring moment of reentry — the point at which the astronauts hit Earth’s thick inner atmosphere while their capsule was still traveling more than 30 times the speed of sound.
Glover described it as a visceral experience, having been stunned by the sound of parachutes deploying after the Orion capsule plummeted through the air and experienced a six-minute communications blackout due to plasma created by the sheer speed at which their vehicle was moving.
“If you dove off … a skyscraper backwards, that’s what it felt like for five seconds,” Glover said, referring to the moment the capsule went into free fall.
The crew was also candid about the unusual feelings conjured by watching your home planet disappear as you venture so far into space.
“When you look down at your display, and you see 212,000 miles, and the miles are increasing… your awareness is heightened the whole time,” said Wiseman.
“I was looking at myself — reflecting as well every day — and I was just looking for signs of agitation, or signs of stress, or signs of anxiety or tension,” he said. “One day, we were in the med kit, and we found some medication” for stress and anxiety.
“We were like, well, I just can’t even imagine taking that,” Wiseman said.
But mental health challenges were an indelible part of the experience, Glover noted.
“It is so important,” he said. “We have a team of operational psychologists and psychiatrists that help us skill up to be ready to accomplish things like this, and so we did not just do that on our own.”
Glover, Koch, Hansen and Wiseman captured striking images of the moon during their seven-hour flyby of the lunar surface, which occurred on the sixth day of their mission.
Already taking pop culture by storm, their journey and unprecedented glimpse of the moon’s far side was as captivating to the public as it was valuable for science, according to NASA.
After years of training together and more than a week spent in space, the astronauts describe their relationship as more than crewmates. They are brothers and sisters, they have said, forever bonded by the trials and triumphs of their adventure — which included living in tight quarters aboard their 16.5-foot-wide Orion spacecraft, grappling with a broken toilet, and experiencing what it’s like to glance back at Earth from the lonely confines of a spacecraft devoid of radio communications more than a quarter million miles away.
“That’s the closest four humans can be and not be a family,” Wiseman said Thursday during opening remarks.
