MIAMI (EFE).— The astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II, the first manned mission to reach the orbit of the Moon in more than half a century, highlighted yesterday that they are shocked by the support they have received upon their return to Earth and that they have fulfilled their wish of “trying to do something that would unite the world.”
“When we returned home, we were blown away by the global outpouring of support, by that sense of pride and ownership of this mission,” Commander Reid Wiseman said at a news conference at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“I think at first that’s what the four of us wanted. We wanted to go out and try to do something that would unite the world,” he added, surrounded by his three space travel companions.
The four crew members of Artemis II – in addition to Wiseman, Christina Koch and Victor Glover, all three from NASA, and Jeremy Hansen, from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) – recalled the most notable parts of their expedition, which made them the first human beings to orbit the Moon since 1972.
However, several of them admitted that they still have difficulty processing what they experienced in the ten days of the mission, which landed on Friday the 10th in the Pacific Ocean.
still floating
Glover claimed that he has been “trying to live in a kind of hole, disconnected from social media and the news” since returning to Earth, while Koch confessed that he still thinks he is floating in space when he wakes up.
Reconditioning usually lasts 45 days, according to Glover, a process that, he explained, is identical to that experienced by astronauts returning from the International Space Station (ISS). The astronaut also recalled one of the moments of greatest adrenaline: re-entry into the atmosphere, which lasted almost fourteen minutes and in which they reached speeds close to 40,000 kilometers per hour in free fall.
“That moment when the braking parachutes were released, and then the pilot parachutes fired and the main parachutes came out (…) it felt like you were jumping backwards from a skyscraper for five seconds.”
Hansen, meanwhile, is the only one who will experience this reconditioning stage for the first time, since Artemis II was his first experience in space.
The Canadian stressed that the mission “went very well” thanks to the close trust between the crew and the NASA control center on Earth.
Artemis II had the objective of boosting the next missions of the Artemis Program, which seeks to land on the moon twice in 2028, while the US space agency simultaneously advances plans to build a base on the Moon.
“It is important that we exhaust these processes, because we are still making changes and learning ways in which we are going to support the 30- and 45-day missions of Artemis III, IV and V,” Wiseman said.
One of the main challenges of the mission was the reliability of the heat shield, a key piece for re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere that suffered damage above what was expected during Artemis I, but which the astronauts said was resolved on this occasion.
The experts “figured out what was wrong (…). It was a very smooth ride,” Wiseman concluded.
At a glance
Improved heat shield
One of the main challenges of Artemis II was to demonstrate the reliability of the heat shield, key in re-entry into the atmosphere and which was damaged on Artemis I. Astronauts said it worked well this time.