On Saturday night, the Artemis II crew was being honored at a NASA event welcoming the astronauts back to Houston.
NASA talks about concerns about Artemis II moon mission
NASA Artemis II entry flight director Rick Henfling describes the moment he breathed a sigh of relief.
The four astronauts who flew around the Moon and back again on the Artemis II mission returned to Johnson Space Center in Houston on April 11 after landing safely on Earth the night before.
And on Saturday night, at a NASA event welcoming the crew back to Houston, they had a story to share.
“Twenty-four hours ago, the Earth outside my window was so big that it was moving at Mach 39,” Artemis II commander Reed Wiseman told the crowd of family members, civil servants and NASA employees, raising his hands to the size of basketballs. “And now I’m back here,” he said, exchanging high-fives on stage with fellow Artemis crew pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen.
“Victor, Christina and Jeremy, we are forever bound together. No one here will ever know what the four of us went through. It was the most special thing that will ever happen in my life,” Wiseman said.
He thanked his family for their support, adding, “You never know what my family was going through. Being over 200,000 miles from home, this hasn’t been easy. Before you leave, it feels like the biggest dream on earth. And once you get out, you just want to go home to your family and friends.”
Wiseman concluded with the first of several group hugs with the crew.
Glover then said, “I’m scared to even try because I haven’t digested what we just did. When this started on April 3rd, I wanted to publicly thank God, and I want to thank God again. … The gratitude for seeing what I saw, doing the things I did, and being with the people I was with is too much to just be in one body.”
Koch said that for her, this mission helped define “what is a crew (and) what is different about a crew and a team.”
She said the crew is “willing to sacrifice, to give grace…(and) to be responsible for (each other). The crew has the same cares, the same needs, and the crew is inescapably and beautifully (and) loyally bonded.”
So when the Artemis II crew saw “little Earth” from space and was asked what their impressions were, Koch said, “Honestly, what struck me was not necessarily the Earth, but the pitch black spot around it.” “Earth is just a lifeboat hanging silently in space.”
She further added, “I may not have learned everything this journey has to teach me, but there is one new thing I know: Planet Earth and you are the crew.”
Hansen, a Canadian Space Agency astronaut, asked his fellow crew members to stand up and link arms, then told mission believers another lesson.
“What you saw was a group of people who loved to contribute, to make meaningful contributions, and to derive joy from it,” Hansen said. “And what we’re hearing is that it was a special event for you to witness. And the reason I asked them to gather here is, what I would suggest to you is that when you look up here, you’re not looking at us, we’re a mirror reflecting back to you. If you like what you see, look a little deeper. This is you.”
Earlier in the day, Wiseman said in a social media post that the crew was aboard a helicopter departing from the USS John P. Murtha, where they underwent medical examinations after landing off the coast of San Diego.
“This planet is incredibly beautiful from every altitude I’ve seen it…from the surface up to 250,000 miles,” Wiseman said on April 11, while sharing a photo taken from a helicopter.
After splashdown just after 8:00 p.m. on April 10, the crew of Artemis II was evacuated to Multa by HSC-23 helicopter. The astronauts underwent medical tests before being transported to land by helicopter.
Artemis II flight director Rick Henfling said at a press conference on April 10 that the crew will be reunited with their families “promptly” after arriving in Houston.
“I’m sure each of our crew members has special plans with their families, but taking time to be with their loved ones will be a priority,” Henfling said.
They have been invited to meet with President Donald Trump at the White House, but it is not clear when that will be. President Trump told the astronauts that he was “pretty busy,” but “I’ll definitely find time.”
The Orion spacecraft, which carried astronauts a record-breaking distance of 252,756 miles from Earth, will undergo intensive testing and analysis. After splashdown, Orion was secured on the well deck of the USS John P. Martha. The craft will be returned to Naval Base San Diego and eventually to Kennedy Space Center in Florida for inspection.
NASA scientists will “thoroughly inspect the spacecraft, acquire onboard data, remove the payload, and conduct additional post-flight inspections.”
Preparations have already begun for future moon missions, including next year’s Artemis III and Artemis IV, which is scheduled to make the first moon landing since Apollo 17 in 1972 in 2028.
“Now that Artemis II is complete, we can now confidently turn our focus to building Artemis III, returning to the lunar surface, building a base, and preparing to never leave the moon again,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman.
Scheduled to launch in 2027, Artemis III will send another astronaut aboard the Orion spacecraft into Earth’s orbit, where it will dock with at least one commercial lunar lander. All of this will prepare the crew to finally land on the moon in 2028.
