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Four astronauts returning to Earth from NASA’s Artemis II mission shared their feelings during their first space-based press conference on Wednesday as they concluded their historic flight. They recounted the emotional experience of wrapping up the mission and preparing for re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, which they’ll experience as a blazing “fireball.”
The crew, aboard the Orion capsule since launching from Florida last week, is scheduled to land off the Southern California coast Friday evening after reaching the moon earlier this week. Their trajectory took them past the moon’s dark, far side, making them the most distant humans in history to date.
As they re-enter Earth’s atmosphere, they’ll be traveling at speeds up to 23,839 miles per hour (38,365 kilometers per hour), a dangerous part of the journey that will stress Orion’s heatshield against intense atmospheric friction.
Victor Glover, Artemis II’s pilot, expressed his thoughts about the re-entry, saying, “Since April 3, 2023, when we were assigned to this mission, I’ve been thinking about entry. There are countless pictures and stories, and I haven’t even fully processed what we’ve been through. We’ve still got two more days, and experiencing that fiery re-entry is profoundly intense.”
The crew, including NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, are the pioneers of a multibillion-dollar series of missions under the Artemis program. Their goal is to send humans back to the moon’s surface by 2028, ahead of China, and to establish a sustained US presence over the following decade by building a lunar base to support future Mars missions.
Koch likened the mission series to a relay race, mentioning, “We have batons to symbolize our role, and we intend to pass them on to the next crew. Everything we do is with those future explorers in mind.”
The upcoming Artemis III will involve testing a lunar dock in low-Earth orbit between the Orion capsule and the lunar landers NASA plans to use for future moon landings. Artemis IV, targeted for 2028, aims to be the first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972.
Meanwhile, scientists and lunar researchers have been closely monitoring the mission, taking notes and analyzing real-time audio communication from the crew from Houston, near NASA’s Mission Control Center. Many are gathered in rooms adjacent to Mission Control, eager to learn from every detail of this groundbreaking journey.
On Friday around 8 p.m. ET (Saturday 0000 GMT), the crew will splash down near San Diego, California, marking the end of their nearly 10-day mission. Their record-breaking distance from Earth reached approximately 252,000 miles—about 4,000 miles farther than Apollo 13’s previous record, which stood for 56 years.
Wiseman shared that the crew managed brief, heartfelt conversations with their families during the mission. “Hearing my crew members laugh, cry, and love their families from afar has been incredible. Family truly means everything to all four of us.”
As they approached their closest point to the moon last Monday, Hansen suggested naming a newly discovered crater in honor of Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll, who passed away from cancer in 2020. Wiseman described that moment as emotional, sharing, “My team approached me with that idea before launch. I gladly said yes, but I couldn’t give the speech myself.”
During the lunar flyby on the sixth day, the crew set a new record by coming within about 4,000 miles of the moon’s surface. This close approach provided real-time scientific observations from their human perspective, offering insights that satellite technology alone cannot deliver. It fostered dynamic discussions between the astronauts and scientists on the ground, spanning from over 250,000 miles away in deep space.
Experts see Artemis II as a crucial step toward unraveling fundamental mysteries about our solar system’s origins. Koch emphasized that the moon serves as a “witness plate” to the solar system’s formation, emphasizing its importance for scientific discovery.
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