As the crew of Artemis II continued their journey back to Earth — after a historic mission to circle the moon for the first time in more than 50 years — U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and a group of lawmakers beamed into a conference call to ask the four astronauts questions.
How do you hope the Artemis II mission inspires the next generation? What are you most looking forward to about splashing down in the Pacific Ocean? What surprised you about the mission?
Who would play you in a movie about the historic Artemis II mission? (The crew declined to answer that last one.)
Cantwell, who is the ranking member of the Senate committee that has oversight over NASA, asked the crew why it was important to have humans travel to space. “Once we go back and land humans on the moon, what are we going to learn from the human eye that the moon rovers couldn’t tell us?” she asked.
Pilot Victor Glover, who is the first person of color to travel to the moon, responded that space travel needs “that human connection.”
“One of the things I was asked to talk about when I come back (is), ‘I want to know how it feels,’” Glover said. “A rover can collect data a lot slower; humans can do it a lot faster, but then they’re also going to come back and tell you how it feels physiologically, in a technical and medical sense, but also in an emotional sense.
“So that we can continue to have that human connection, not just the scientific and exploration, but the human connection.”
The Artemis II mission launched April 1 from Cape Canaveral, Fla., left Earth’s orbit and orbited the moon, marking the first time humans have traveled to the moon since the Apollo missions, which concluded in 1972. This time, commander Reid Wiseman, mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen and Glover traveled farther from Earth than humans ever have before.
The Artemis II mission is the second in a series of NASA launches that aims to land humans back on the moon and study how to use the lunar surface as a pit stop on the way to Mars. NASA hopes to land humans on the moon as soon as 2028.
Over the course of the mission, the astronauts have frequently joined NASA’s livestream to showcase life inside the spacecraft and talk about the historic mission. President Donald Trump spoke to the astronauts Tuesday.
The personable crew have captured the nation’s attention with humorous and heartfelt moments, particularly when the astronauts asked to name a previously unnamed crater on the moon’s surface Carroll, in honor of Wiseman’s late wife.
On Wednesday, as the astronauts were signing off, Koch let herself float upside down, showing off the weightlessness of space.
A representative from Mission Control monitoring the rocket on the ground told the crew they had “passed the halfway-home mark.” The rocket was set to splash down Friday in the Pacific Ocean.
