CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) \u2014 The Artemis II astronauts who ignited a lunar renaissance gave high marks Thursday to their moonship, especially the heat shield, for its performance during reentry.<\/p>\n
In their first news conference since returning to Earth, the three Americans and one Canadian said their lunar flyby puts NASA in a much better position for a moon landing by a crew in two years and an eventual moon base. They spoke from NASA\u2019s Johnson Space Center in Houston, their home base.<\/p>\n
Commander Reid Wiseman later told The Associated Press that he\u2019s been so busy since getting back that he hasn\u2019t had time to gaze up at the moon, let alone Carroll Crater, the name suggested by the crew for a bright lunar crater in honor of his late wife. They shared two daughters whose anxieties and fears over their father\u2019s journey ended with his safe splashdown late last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing 252,000 miles away from home was the most majestic, gorgeous thing that human eyes will ever witness,\u201d he said in an interview with the AP. But hurtling back through the atmosphere at 39 times the speed of sound, \u201cthat is scary and that is risky.\u201d That\u2019s why he yearned for home midway through his flight. \u201cYou just want to hold your kids and you just want them to know that you\u2019re safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada\u2019s Jeremy Hansen launched to the moon from Florida on April 1, NASA\u2019s first lunar crew in more than a half-century and by far the most diverse.<\/p>\n
They became the most distant travelers ever \u2014 breaking Apollo 13’s record \u2014 as they whipped around the lunar far side, illuminated enough to reveal features never viewed before by the human eye. The sight of a total lunar eclipse added to the wonderment.<\/p>\n
Their Orion capsule, which they named Integrity, parachuted into the Pacific last Friday to close out the nearly 10-day voyage. Artemis II’s Houston homecoming the next day coincided with the 56th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 13.<\/p>\n
Wiseman said he and Glover \u201cmaybe saw two moments of a touch of char loss\u201d to the heat shield as Integrity plunged through the fastest, hottest part of reentry. Once aboard the recovery ship, they peered at the bottom of the capsule as best they could, leaning over to view any signs of damage. They spotted a little loss of charred material on the shoulder, where the heat shield meets the capsule.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor four humans just looking at the heat shield, it looked wonderful to us. It looked great, and that ride in was really amazing,\u201d Wiseman said.<\/p>\n
He cautioned that detailed analyses still need to be conducted. \u201cWe are going to fine-tooth comb every single, not even every molecule, probably every atom on this heat shield,” he said.<\/p>\n
The heat shield on the first Artemis test flight in 2022 \u2014 with no one aboard \u2014 came back so pockmarked and gouged that it pushed Artemis II back by months if not years. Instead of redoing it, NASA opted to change the capsule’s entry path to minimize heating. Future capsules will sport a new design.<\/p>\n
As the parachutes released right before splashdown, Glover said he felt like he was in freefall \u2014 like diving backward off a skyscraper. \u201cThat\u2019s what it felt like for five seconds,\u201d he said, adding when the ride smoothed out: \u201cIt was glorious.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since their return, the four astronauts have endured round after round of medical testing to check their balance, vision, muscle strength and coordination, and overall health. They even put on spacewalking suits for exercises under conditions simulating the moon\u2019s one-sixth gravity of Earth to see how much endurance and dexterity future moonwalkers might have upon lunar touchdown.<\/p>\n
NASA already is working on Artemis III, the next step in its grand moon base-building plans. The platform from which the rocket launches headed back Thursday to Kennedy Space Center\u2019s Vehicle Assembly Building, where it will be prepped for next year\u2019s Artemis launch.<\/p>\n
Still awaiting an assigned crew, Artemis III will remain in orbit around Earth as astronauts practice docking their Orion capsule with one or two lunar landers in development by Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin.<\/p>\n
Artemis IV will follow in 2028 under NASA\u2019s latest schedule, with two astronauts landing near the moon\u2019s south pole.<\/p>\n
NASA is aiming for a sustainable moon presence this time around. During the Apollo moonshots, astronauts kept their visits short. Twelve astronauts explored the lunar surface, beginning with Apollo 11\u2019s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969 and ending with Apollo 17\u2019s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt in 1972.<\/p>\n
Koch said that since returning, she and her crewmates are \u201cfeeling even more excited and just ready to take that on as an agency.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe made it happen,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Everyone will need to accept extra risk to achieve all this and trust that any future problems can be figured out in real time, Hansen noted. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to be able to pound everything flat before we go. We’re going to have to trust each other,” he said.<\/p>\n
While everything went smoothly for them, \u201cit was also very clear to us that it can get pretty bumpy,\u201d he said. Future crews will have to “understand it can get real bumpy real fast.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute\u2019s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) \u2014 The Artemis II astronauts who ignited a lunar renaissance gave high marks Thursday to their moonship, especially the heat shield, for its performance during reentry. In their first news conference since returning to Earth, the three Americans and one Canadian said their lunar flyby puts NASA in a much better … Continue reading Artemis II astronauts praise their moonship’s performance, especially the heat shield<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2851],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1497243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-state-news-archive"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-06 10:18:07","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1497243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1497243"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1497243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1497986,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1497243\/revisions\/1497986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1497243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1497243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1497243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}