Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Astronauts on board Artemis II mission They’re called a crew, but they really consider themselves a team, right down to just walking around the cabin of the Orion spacecraft. But they are intently focused on the overall success of the Artemis program, since there is a lot at stake because it is the first manned journey into deep space in more than 50 years. Astronauts are fully aware of this and how it will affect future moon missions.
“Part of our ethos as a crew and our values from the beginning is that this is a relay race,” mission specialist Christina Koch said during a virtual press conference with reporters Wednesday evening. “In fact, we have batons that we purchased that actually symbolize that. We plan to hand them out to the next crew. Everything we do is with them in mind.”
Koch pointed to the tasks she and the Orion crew have performed so far during their mission, such as manually piloting the spacecraft and making sure procedures are as they should be.
“We’re always thinking in terms of what the next crew is going to think about this, and how is this going to help them succeed,” Koch stated.
It also takes teamwork just to live in such a small space. Koch said Orion’s cabin appears larger in microgravity than she expected, even though the astronauts are constantly bumping into each other “100 percent of the time.” Moving around the cabin, even to perform simple tasks, requires them to narrate their precise movements to each other to avoid bumping into crewmates.
“Everything we do here is an activity for four people, but it’s also really fun,” Koch joked.
This vision was among the personal details the Artemis crew shared from space on Wednesday evening – the eighth day of their mission – as they prepare to return to Earth on Friday after a historic 10-day journey around the moon. The first manned journey into deep space since 1972 saw the Orion Integrity spacecraft carry the crew 252,756 miles from Earth – the furthest distance humans have ever traveled from our planet.
Watch this: Watch NASA’s Artemis II launch to the moon
During the mission, the astronauts also shared an emotional moment with viewers on Earth when They suggested naming one of the craters on the moon “Carol.” In memory of Commander Reed Wiseman’s late wife, a nurse who died of cancer in 2020 at the age of 46. Wiseman spoke about his feelings at that moment when asked during the press conference. Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen submitted a proposal to Mission Control to name the crater on Orion’s lunar mission.
“When Jeremy spelled Carol’s name, Carol, that’s when I was overcome with emotion. I looked up and Christina was crying. I put my hand on Jeremy’s hand while he was still talking. (He was right there on that rail.) And I could tell he was shaking,” Wiseman recalled. “We almost all collapsed there. And for me personally, that was the pinnacle moment of the mission for me.”
Weisman went on to say that the moment was “where the four of us were the most fake and the most connected, and we came out of that really focused on that next day.”
The Earth cluster was captured through the window of the Orion spacecraft at 6:41 PM EDT, April 6, 2026, during the Artemis 2 crew flyby of the Moon. On the Earth Day side, swirling clouds appear over the Australia and Oceania region. On the Moon in the foreground, Ohm Crater has terraced rims and a flat floor punctuated by central peaks.
The crew is also focused on the return trip to Earth, and has been for more than three years, pilot Victor Glover noted to reporters.
“We had already been thinking about entering since April 3, 2023, when we were given this mission, and in one of the first press conferences, we were asked: ‘What are we looking forward to?’” Glover said. “And I said, ‘Down.’ Which is somewhat humorous, but also literal, in that we have to get back. There’s a lot of data that you’ve already seen, but all good Stuff comes back with us.
He explained that there are a lot of images and stories that the Artemis II crew still has to share. Glover also admitted that he hasn’t even begun to process everything the astronauts have been through over the past week.
“We still have two more days to go, and riding a fireball through the atmosphere is pretty profound, too,” Glover said.
The Artemis crew is scheduled to return to Earth on Friday, with a landing in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego at 5:07 p.m., and you can follow the conclusion of the mission on the CNET website. You can also watch the full Press conference on Wednesday On NASA’s YouTube channel.