Artemis II Crew Reflect on Mission, Look Ahead to Artemis III

The crew of NASA’s Artemis II told members of the press on April 16 that the Orion spacecraft they had test-flown around the moon and back was already in a state fit to carry the crew of Artemis III.

“There are always things we need to improve. Always,” said Reid Wiseman, Artemis II’s commander. “There are ways we need to do better living in space. There are ways this machine needs to be improved. But, in my own personal opinion, they could put the Artemis III Orion [spacecraft] on the Space Launch System tomorrow and launch it, and the crew would be in great shape.”

Artemis II’s 10-day mission was the first crewed test flight of the Orion spacecraft—the crew capsule and service module combo tasked by NASA with returning astronauts to the surface of the moon.

Part of that test flight included manually flying the spacecraft to grade its maneuverability during docking procedures, utilizing the moon rocket’s upper stage for proximity operations ahead of Artemis III’s planned rendezvous, and docking with the lunar landing vehicles currently being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin.

Artemis II’s pilot, Victor Glover, flew Orion during that proximity test and said the vehicle performed better than it did in the simulator. Wiseman also chimed in to praise the entire crew for playing their part in the ultimately all-hands-on-deck operation. While he was running the procedures, and Glover was at the controls, mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen looked out the windows, mapping their distance from the target.

Regarding the upcoming lunar landers, Wiseman was adamant that if his crew had access to one of the vehicles, they would have attempted a landing during their lunar flyby.

“I’m going to eat these words. It’s not the leap I thought it was,” Wiseman said. “If you had given us the key [to a lander], we would have taken it down and landed on the moon.”

“It’s going to be extremely technically challenging, but this team needs to show up every day knowing it is absolutely doable, and it’s doable soon,” he said.

That first lunar landing attempt is slated to occur during Artemis IV in early 2028.

But throughout each milestone and each personal revelation, the four astronauts inside the Orion spacecraft built a uniquely strong bond; so much so that they each said that during their first night back on Earth, their beds aboard the recovery ship were too far apart.

“We are bonded forever,” Wiseman said. “I mean, that’s the closest four humans can be and not be a family. So it was just an amazing adventure, and every single person on that crew lifted each other up the entire time.”

Meanwhile, outside their spacecraft, the world watched and was affected by their mission in ways they never could have imagined. They admitted that they weren’t truly aware of the impact their moonshot had until they came home, and it was a realization they were still coming to.

“We didn’t know,” Koch said. “In fact, what, what we were told really through talking with a couple times with our families, was that there was an impact, not necessarily the number of viewers or anything like that, but that there was a positive impact, that it was superseding any lines, any identities that people had.

“When my husband looked me in the eye on that video call and said, ‘No, really, you’ve made a difference,’ it brought tears to my eyes,” she added. “And I said, ‘that’s all we ever wanted.’”