by The first astronaut crew to visit the Moon in over 50 years just made a few publicity stops on Earth.
Nasa announced Monday (April 3) that agency astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Jeremy Hansen will pilot the Artemis 2 mission, a flight around the moon scheduled for launch in November 2024.
The quartet landed on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on Wednesday (April 5) and “The Today Show” on Thursday (April 6). During the tours, the team recalled their reactions to learning they had been selected and shared more about Artemis 2, which will mark the first voyage by a woman, a Canadian, and a person of color to the moon.
Related: NASA’s Artemis program: Everything you need to know
On the first day of the mission, the crew of Artemis 2 will orbit Earth approximately 40,000 miles (64,373 kilometers) to test their Orion spacecraft and onboard life support systems, after which they will begin their journey to the moon, NBC’s Anna Kaplan reported (opens in a new tab) Thursday for “The Today Show”.
“Right now, we’re not scared at all. Like, we’re not even intimidated by it; we’re just excited,” Hansen said Thursday on “The Today Show,” according to Kaplan. “It’s what inspired us our whole lives, and we just want to go for it. We’re really excited to get started.”
On “The Late Show,” Colbert asked Wiseman, who in 2014 spent 165 days aboard the international space station (ISS), why humans are returning to the moon. “Because we want to see humans on Mars,” replied the astronaut, who will command the Artemis 2 mission.
Wiseman added that living and working on the ISS was the first real step to understanding how humans function beyond Earth. THE Artemis program, which aims to establish a long-term human presence on and around the moon, will greatly expand this knowledge, if all goes according to plan.
Hansen thanked NASA leaders for selecting his country to be part of the mission and for nurturing a global partnership that “elevates us and allows us to contribute our genius,” he said in ” The Late Show”.
“It’s obvious to no one in Canada that if the United States wants to go back to the moon, they don’t need Canada to do it,” Hansen said. “It was a deliberate decision, because they are thinking big.”
Hansen, who will be going to space for the first time on Artemis 2, talked about the things he will learn from the rest of his experienced crew. While some aspects of the mission will be a first for the entire team, like Orion’s flight, Hansen said some things are passed down from astronauts like “the secret handshake.” Chief among them is the management of bodily functions in the cluttered, low-gravity space above the Earth.
“Because you’re messing up in space and you don’t have any friends on board anymore,” Hansen joked on “The Late Show.”
Christina Koch, who spent 328 days aloft on her first trip to the ISS – the longest continuous time in space ever by a woman – said Earth ‘looks absolutely beautiful’ from space .
She spoke of “the overview effect“, a term used to explain a person’s cognitive shift or shift in consciousness when Earth is viewed from space, which begins 100 km above the planet’s surface.
Astronauts who spend time on the ISS, whose orbit is about 250 miles (400 km) up, often cite the Big Picture Effect as life changing, in that ‘you can’t see political or religious borders from up there. “All you see is Earth, and you see we’re a lot more alike than we’re different,” Koch said Wednesday on “The Late Show.”
When asked when the Artemis 2 mission will fly, mission commander Wiseman said the exact date has yet to be determined.
“We’re going to fly when the crew is ready, when NASA is ready and the vehicle is ready,” he said.
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