Artemis II crew reflects on historic lunar flyby

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — For the first time since returning from their nearly 10-day mission around the moon, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen are answering questions about their lunar flyby. During a media briefing at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Commander Reid Wiseman said, “It’s a beautiful thing to witness what we got to witness, but at the end of the day, you have to do the mission too.”

The crew traveled farther than any other humans in history, surpassing the record set by Apollo 13. The Artemis II crew reached a maximum distance of 252,756 miles from Earth. Mission specialist Jeremy Hansen told reporters, “The sense I had was the sense of fragility and feeling small, infinitesimally small - But yet this very powerful feeling as a human being as a group.” The crew has spent the past week undergoing medical testing, seeing doctors, and reviewing science objectives.

Even as the crew begins to settle into their return, teams at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida are preparing to rehab Mobile Launcher 1 ahead of Artemis III, a crewed mission in low-earth orbit set to launch next year.