“Han Solo Wants to Be Me”: Artemis II’s Victor Glover flies aboard Orion

Even if you’re 250,000 miles from Earth, sleep is important. However, for all the life-sustaining provisions aboard the Orion spacecraft, the capsule lacked sleeping chambers, leaving only room for four people. Artemis II The crew is with a really weird sleeping arrangement.

“I was sleeping near the air conditioning vent. So I would wake up and see a big piece of metal,” Glover told CNET during a video call. “And it was like, ‘Oh, I’m in space. I’m weightless.’

Sleep wasn’t just a way for astronauts to recharge; It also stopped them during their historic journey. Glover explained, “What really caught my attention is that we’re human too. It’s like camping, and that’s a very important part of this trip.”

Artemis II It was the first manned mission to the Moon in more than 50 years. He follows Artemis Ia 2022 unmanned mission that was the first for NASA’s new Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft. The goal of Artemis II was for a crew to test the spacecraft, life support systems, the SLS rocket, and procedures necessary for future lunar missions that would include landing on the moon and even building a base there.

Glover, Orion’s pilot, along with Commander Reed Wiseman, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, make up the Artemis II crew. The mission made a lot of history. It is the first time a black or Canadian woman or man has traveled to the moon. The four Artemis 2 astronauts traveled 252,756 miles from Earth, farther than any other human, surpassing the previous record set by the Apollo 13 mission in 1970.

This wasn’t Glover’s first time in space. In 2020, using a Falcon 9 rocket for liftoff, he piloted the Crew Dragon capsule to and from the International Space Station for… NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 missionHe spent more than 167 days in space. But Artemis II gave Glover the opportunity to be the first to fly Orion, a new vehicle designed for Artemis missions. For the majority of the nearly 10-day flight, Orion was in autopilot mode. But Glover had several opportunities to manually control the spacecraft to test how it handled.

“It was a lot of fun and enjoyment,” Glover said of the Orion flyby. “It was a test pilot’s dream to fly a new spacecraft for the first time by hand.”

Even after spending some time practicing flight in a simulator on Earth, he was surprised by how responsive Orion’s hand controller was and how clear the cameras, which are used to maneuver the vehicle around the planet, were. Temporary cryogenic propulsion stage Which carries fuel for the upper stage of take-off. He said the actual camera and screens were like “looking out a window.”

When I asked Glover if he felt like Han Solo when he was piloting Orion, he replied, “Han Solo wants to be like me when he grows up!” Throughout my interview, Glover was kind, compassionate, and funny.

“I get to do cooler things than Han Solo. I mean just the fact of it.” This is real“It’s better.”

Although a moon landing was not in the plans for this mission, the Orion crew traveled about 4,000 miles beyond the moon, allowing them to see parts of the moon that had never been seen before. For comparison, The Apollo missions flew about 70 miles over the moon to make the landing, which limits how much they can actually see.

The pictures Glover and the crew took of the moon were stunning. Shots like Earthset were a reminder of how beautiful our planet is and our place within the solar system. Astronauts even witnessed a total solar eclipse as they orbited the far side of the Moon. But none of the photos they took compared to what they saw, according to Glover.

“I could see the curvature of the moon. Depth is just one aspect you can’t see in the pictures. But here’s the other thing, the pictures lack scale.”

For the flyby, Orion was moving fast, 60,863 mph relative to Earth, but only 3,139 mph relative to the Moon, according to NASA. The speed meant that the shadows on the surface were constantly morphing into different shapes. Glover was particularly fascinated by the lunar terminator, where the light and dark sides of the moon meet. The interval is not fixed and depends on the position of the Moon relative to the Sun. When Orion moved, it transformed into different shapes that resembled letters of the alphabet.

“People know I fell in love with the Terminator when I got to see the real Terminator up close. I watched the Terminator go from the letter C to the letter D, which means there was a point when the moon was half bright and half dark. It was pointing directly at me.”

The Artemis II lunar flyby was a highlight of the journey for many of us on Earth, in part because we were able to watch it in real time on Streaming services like Netflix. Almost the entire mission was broadcast live on NASA’s website and YouTube channel, making it look like a reality show. One minute you’re watching the crew eating, exercising, and taking pictures of the moon; And the next day, there’s a random jar of Nutella floating in front of a camera. I asked Glover if he felt like he was on a TV show while in Orion.

“It didn’t feel like a reality show on my part,” Glover said. “To see the science, to hear us at half moon, to see us fly in the spaceship with our hands, to see bedtime, bath time, teeth brushing time, that’s what it’s like. The mission was all of those things.”

Glover was ecstatic when he heard how I and others felt so connected to the crew during their mission. He said it was important for NASA to let the world know what it would take to send four people a quarter of a million miles.

“I think maybe one of the most special things about this mission is how much I got to see,” Glover said with a smile. “It makes me feel good that you felt like you were there.”