NASA Artemis II Post-Mission News Conference — Transcript, Key Answers & Q&A

Reid, Victor, Christina and Jeremy. Good luck. Godspeed, Artemis two. Let's go.

It was an amazing ride uphill. We have good separation, good motion.

Houston is go for TLI.

We have the start of the translunar injection burn. That will send the crew around the moon. The first humans to do so in over 50 years.

You can see the entire globe from pole to pole. It was the most spectacular moment.

As of 30s ago. You are now closer to the moon than you are to us on earth. Good morning integrity and good morning, moon.

We caught a view of earth in the window. One.

We look like we're smiling at you.

Courtney Beasley, NASA — moderator — verbatim remarksGood afternoon and welcome to NASA's Johnson Space Center for our Artemis two crew news conference. The Artemis two crew is back on earth, and they are ready to discuss their record breaking mission with you today. Before we get into the question and answer portion of the event, we will start with some brief opening remarks from Reid. Go ahead.

Reid Wiseman, NASA — Artemis II commander — verbatim remarksThanks, Courtney. Well, that just happened. It's great to sit here and watch your mission go by in a short clip there. What a what an amazing journey that was.

Reid Wiseman, NASA — Artemis II commander — verbatim remarksFirst and foremost. Victor. Christina. Jeremy, just thank you.

Reid Wiseman, NASA — Artemis II commander — verbatim remarksLike this was an unbelievable adventure. And it was made possible by this crew and the support of each other throughout the whole thing. And I've said it so many times, we are just we are bonded forever. I mean, that's the closest for humans can be and not be a family.

Reid Wiseman, NASA — Artemis II commander — verbatim remarksSo it was just an amazing adventure and every single person on that crew lifted each other up the entire time. So I just can't thank the three of you enough. Thank you. While we're giving thanks, you're welcome.

Reid Wiseman, NASA — Artemis II commander — verbatim remarksWhile we're giving thanks, as as astronauts, we I feel like we're just always thanking the team. We're always thanking the team. So I think today we're just going to start by thanking the world. Let's just thank the world.

Reid Wiseman, NASA — Artemis II commander — verbatim remarksAnd let's break that down for for one minute, and then I'll hand it back to Courtney. But this this NASA organization and our international partners, they put together this amazing vehicle, the Orion spacecraft that we named integrity atop the Space Launch System, riding to the moon on a European service module. They provided this this massive structure that was able to push for humans around the moon and bring them safely back. So thank you to every single person that had a hand in building that machine, because it was a magnificent machine.

Reid Wiseman, NASA — Artemis II commander — verbatim remarksBut then we would also be remiss if we didn't thank the media, if we didn't thank the content creators, and if we didn't thank the world for just tuning in for a second and getting hooked on this mission. We were certainly hooked on this mission, but when we came home, we were shocked at the the global outpouring of support, of pride, of ownership of this mission. And really, I think at the beginning, that's what the four of us wanted. We wanted to go out and try to do something that would bring the world together to unite the world.

Reid Wiseman, NASA — Artemis II commander — verbatim remarksAnd then I'll just wrap that all up with the astronauts. Creed is always to launch us, friends as land and land as friends. And when you live together in a small group for as long as you do on the space station or even ten days, it's a challenge. But I am here to tell the world.

Reid Wiseman, NASA — Artemis II commander — verbatim remarksWe launched as friends and we came back as best friends. Thank you.

All right. And with that, we will begin taking questions. Due to the limited time we have today and the high volume of requests, we ask that media limit themselves to one question, please. We'll start here in the room with Will.

Go ahead.

Will Robinson-Smith, Spaceflight Now — question paraphrased[Will Robinson-Smith, Spaceflight Now, asks the crew how it felt to actually fly and live inside Orion — which they had named “Integrity” — for the first time, emotionally and as a piloting task, after having built up the spacecraft's name as a personal ethos during training.]

Are you addressed it to me? So I'll take it. You know, we've talked a lot about integrity. And for folks that have followed us, there's a saying that we learned from one of our national outdoor leadership school instructors.

Integrity is not a one or a zero. You don't either have it or not have it. You can be in integrity and you can be out of integrity. And I will tell you, I'll be the first to admit that there were moments on this mission where I was out of integrity, because sometimes the view or the human experience would just pull me away from the work.

And, and it just, it happens. And it's a beautiful thing to get to witness what we got to witness. But at the end of the day, you got to do the mission too. And so there were moments where I was out of integrity.

There was moments where each of us would would fall out for a second. But the coolest part of that word I was reflecting on last night, like we named that spacecraft integrity. And it just kind of coalesced this thread in the four of us. And whenever someone would slip out, it was amazing to watch the other three pull them back in, and it was a glorious thing.

Anybody want to add anything for integrity? It's just such a such the perfect for this crew and this spacecraft.

We're going to take a few more questions here in the room and then go over to our phone bridge. Just a reminder for those on the phone bridge to please press star one. When you're ready to enter the queue, go ahead.

Natalia, ABC 13 — question paraphrased[Natalia, ABC 13, tells the crew that roughly 10 million people watched her network's splashdown coverage alone, describes how captivated her four-year-old daughter was by the mission, and asks whether the scale and public reach of what they did has hit them yet and how it has changed them.]

You know, first, I just want to thank you for sharing that. That is wonderful to hear about your your daughter. That's awesome. And thank her for that.

You know, creating that story. We landed on Friday. Tomorrow will be one week. And I just was trying to live in a little hole for one week, been off social media, not on the news.

So no, I don't know. But you know, my kids have made it pretty clear my neighbors and, you know, it's hard to live in a bubble nowadays. I'm trying very hard, but but you know, I think it's what I've come to realize is we did what we said we were going to do, and now we've got to step out and, and just face that reality. And so that's a great thing.

But I'll, I'll figure it out tomorrow. Courtney started this by saying the crew is ready. I'm really not. But but I will be next week.

Do you mind if I add something? Please? Please just. It's the way you word it.

I mean, I love your question, but you say what you guys did with the four of you did, and we just don't not see it that way. We should be rewording that question to what we did. That's what this was. We just went up and did what we were going to do, and all we saw was a camera.

We didn't have that connection with you. We lost that connection with earth by and large. And so we just leaned into what we had. We leaned into each other and mission control, which is really all we had in our families a couple of times.

But we did that because we had been lifted up and supported to just go up there and be ourselves and just do our job. And we went into it thinking, you know, it's not going to be perfect, but it's going to be good enough. Seems like it was good enough. Yeah.

I'll add a little bit. Just my personal perspective when I got back, as someone who doesn't necessarily like attention, I don't like my birthday, the birthday song being sung to me, any of that. My husband said that before I got back. He had a conversation with my brothers and sisters and they were like, who's going to tell her? [LAUGHTER] Because we didn't know.

And in fact, what what we were told, really, through talking with the 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. And 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 and I said, that's all we ever wanted. And I can tell you that the difference now is when we come before you, now we've done this together.

We took your hearts with us and your hearts lifted our hearts. And now that we've done it, I think it's easier to accept that there's attention on the NASA teams, on the fact that we did it. You know, in the beginning, three years ago, we were being celebrated for something that we hadn't done. And having put in the work and having seen our team's successes, I think we're ready to share in that inspiration and to celebrate it.

Okay, we'll take two more here in the room and then head to our phone bridge. Kristen. Go ahead.

Kristen Fisher — question paraphrased[Kristen Fisher asks whether, after a few days back on Earth, any of the crew has had an experience like Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell's — a profound sense of universal connectedness or a shift in consciousness — given that all four touched on similar themes during the flight.]

Yes. Chris, it's a it's a great question. I'll just the only thing I can do is just share one quick story. When I got back on the on the ship, I'm not a I'm not really a religious person, but there was just no other avenue for me to, to explain anything or to experience anything.

So I asked for the chaplain on the Navy ship to just come visit us for a minute. And when that man walked in, I'd never met him before in my life, but I saw the cross on his on his collar, and I just I broke down in tears like it's very hard to fully grasp what we just went through. And in these short. You just said it's been a week since we've been back, but it's been a week of medical testing, physical testing, doctors science objectives.

Like we have not had that decompression. We have not had that reflection time. So I'm basing this on what we saw. And when the when the sun eclipsed behind the moon, I think all four of us.

I turned to to Victor and I said, I don't think humanity has evolved to the point of being able to comprehend what we were looking at right now, because it was otherworldly and it was amazing.

The only thing I would add is, I think, first of all, thank you for sharing that. That was a really special moment. I was in the bed right across when the chaplain came in and. The only thing I would add is I am a religious person, but everything else is the same.

It it was there is something in there. And as we start to process, I'll have to tell you next week, but haven't had a chance to really unpack it all yet.

All right. We'll take one more here in the room and then head over to our phone bridge.

[Keith Garvin, KPRC 2 Houston, asks each crew member to describe the single most remarkable thing they saw that simply could not be conveyed through photos, video, or social media.]

I can start. I was going to ask answer Kristen's question a little bit too. And I think these tie together, I've been trying to find words for it. I don't really have it yet, but we just saw so many amazing things and people ask, what's the most amazing one?

And it's you can't pick one. There's just so many amazing experiences we had. But overall, where I keep coming back to is what kept grabbing my attention when the lighting was right and we were looking out the window, is that I kept seeing this like depth to, I guess, the galaxy, you know, for what we were visually observing out there, this depth to the galaxy that I just had never experienced before. And it's not that I could tell which stars were really close and further, because it has to do with how bright they are, but because of how bright they are and their differences, they look like you can tell where they are in 3D.

That was mind blowing for me. And then you see the same thing with the moon and the earth. You're viewing them from this new perspective, but this perspective with like three dimensional depth. And I mean, I've heard Christina talk about this a lot.

We're all kind of struck by these things that make us feel small, and that the sense I had was this sense of, of fragility and feeling small, infinitesimally small, but yet this very powerful feeling as a human being, like as a group. And that is what to me is what I would try to share. I saw it in all these sites over and over again. I kept seeing that same thing and that same feeling, small and powerless, but yet powerful together.

Beautiful.

Okay, we'll head over to our phone for our next question is from Nell Greenfield with NPR.

[Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR, asks how the crew has been sleeping since returning and whether any of them have had dreams about the Moon.]

I can take this one. I I've got a couple things I can say on that one. Been sleeping great since we got back. We are tired, so I think our bodies are ready to accept any time zone of sleep that we offered it.

And what I've noticed, which is completely different from my first flight, and surprisingly so since my first flight was so long, is every time I've been waking up, or in the first few days I thought I was floating, I truly thought I was floating and I had to convince myself I wasn't. And even after 328 days in space on my previous mission, I never did the thing where you. You think something will float in front of you. I've done that on this return, for some reason, I.

I put a shirt in the air and it went. It actually surprised me. And so that's been the real thing, which I've welcomed because space sleep is the best sleep ever. It's so peaceful, it's so comfortable.

And to have a little bit of that after our mission was over so quickly has been really special.

Our next.

Question, just tell a little funny thing because I think you'll get a kick out of it. I sleep a lot better now because I don't have reed underneath me kicking me.

Oh come on. [LAUGHTER] Oh.

We should talk about our first night of sleep on the ship, where we were about eight feet apart in the beds in the med bay, and it felt way too far. [LAUGHTER] That was not okay.

I heard Christina say, hey, can we open up these curtains and pull all the beds together? Because you guys are way too far, way too far away.

Okay. Our next question is from Loren Grush with Bloomberg.

Loren Grush, Bloomberg — question paraphrased[Loren Grush, Bloomberg, notes that sensor readings flagged issues during the flight and that helium pressurization-system valves were reported leaking, and asks whether there were moments the crew felt genuinely concerned about safety or whether it felt smooth from their seats.]

I might be taking one.

Well, I, I might be a bit more dramatic than some of my crewmates. So usually they do a good job of keeping the boy with a lot of hyperbole grounded. But when you look down at your display and you see 212,000 miles and the miles are increasing, I mean that your awareness is heightened the whole time. I feel like it was I was looking at all, all four of us.

I was looking at myself, reflecting as well every day. And I was just looking for signs of agitation or signs of stress, or signs of anxiety or tension. In fact, I think one day we were in the med kit and we found some medication for for that purpose. We were like, wow, I just can't even imagine taking that.

Like we were just we were really good. We were really, really good and really supportive of each other. But you always know in the back of your head that something could go wrong. And I think that just builds a little bit of anxiety.

And you're right, we did have we had some pressure leaking through our PCA assembly, which I'm sure we'll talk more about in post-flight. We had some ventline issues on the toilet that were that were a little bit problematic for us on the primary vent line. And then we had a few cautions and warnings that came up from time to time. And, and those always, they always get your attention.

We had a smoke detector go off on the next to last day. I mean, you want to get somebody's attention really quick, make make the fire alarm go off in your spacecraft when you're still about 80,000 miles from home. And that that starts off an automated sequence of shutting down the ventilation and the power system. And, and that was it was tense.

It wasn't scary, but it was tense for a few minutes until we got things reconfigured. But the thing that we we drilled into our heads before we launched is no fast hands. Let's, let's evaluate this machine. Let's see what the machine is telling us.

Let's see what Houston is telling us. And then let's come to an integrated decision. But nothing had to happen quick. And this this machine.

I was talking to our program manager last night on the phone for just a minute. Howard Hu, and I like there are always things we need to improve. Always. There are ways we need to do better living in space.

There's way this machine needs to be improved, but I. My own personal opinion, they could put the Artemis three Orion on the Space Launch System tomorrow and launch it, and the crew would be in great shape. So this vehicle really handled very well.

All right. Next up we are going to head over to the Canadian Space Agency for two questions.

Sarah Leavitt, CBC News — question paraphrased[Sarah Leavitt, CBC News, addressing Jeremy Hansen, first jokes about whether he has taken out the garbage since his wife complained about chores, then asks what emotions beyond gratitude, joy, and love have surfaced for him since seeing Earth and the far side of the Moon the way he did.]

Jeremy Hansen, Canadian Space Agency — answer paraphrasedJeremy Hansen said what resonated most with him, echoing Reid Wiseman's opening remarks, was discovering how creatively people had followed and riffed on the mission online. He said the humour and engagement he had seen so far reinforced a belief he already held — that people's default is to be good to one another — and that it left him with more hope for the future and eager to see what comes next.

I want.

Okay, we should have one more question from CSA.

Elisa, Radio-Canada — question paraphrased[Elisa, Radio-Canada (French-language CBC, Montreal), asks Jeremy Hansen in French how the mission changed his outlook on life, and whether he experienced physical and psychological changes.]

Jeremy Hansen, Canadian Space Agency — answer paraphrasedJeremy Hansen, answering partly in French and partly in English, said the mission had not so much changed his worldview as reinforced it — above all the need for people on Earth to collaborate. He said that, as Christina Koch had put it after the flight, the four of them really were a crew, and that the experience made that conviction concrete: seeing is believing.

All right, we'll take our next few questions here in the room. Go ahead.

[McKenna Earnhart, Fox 26, asks Victor Glover what he was feeling — what his body was telling him — during the sequence when the crew came back from deep space and could see the ocean again.]

Thank you. Great question and I'll keep my face quiet more next time. [LAUGHTER] But no, the moment. Well, first of all, all of the things that was a very intense 13 minutes and 36 seconds. That moment was when the drogues released and then the pilot shoots and the mains came out in Dragon.

I've experienced a similar entry, and in Dragon, the drogue chutes don't release the same way and in the same sequencing. And so I don't remember feeling, you know, back to freefall from having drag or G on the vehicle. I think those actually are still connected to the vehicle as the main chutes come out on that vehicle. I remember feeling the yo yo though as the parachutes were breathing, I could feel that 30, 20ft moving up and down.

But when the drogues cut away, we went back to freefall. And watching that on the video felt almost the same way it felt in the video or in the vehicle. I would tell you, I've never been base jumping. I've never been skydiving.

But if you dove off a skydiver, a skyscraper backwards, that's what it felt like for five seconds. And then the mains, the pilots and the mains came out and it was it was glorious.

Okay, we'll take our next question right here. Go ahead.

[A reporter notes that Christina Koch posted about bringing Super Bowl confetti from the Philadelphia Eagles aboard, and asks whether anyone else brought something sports-related or a personal item they felt they had to take.]

Yeah. Anybody else?

From a general sense, we all do get a very small allocation, mass allocation. And on this vehicle, it's very small. So we were just trying to think of of things we could take. Like I took a couple notes from friends and things that I had written down some, some great quotes.

And then I, I just on my way out of my house, I just grabbed this bracelet, which my daughter had made for me a couple years ago. I was just like, I need something that I can just wear and take. And oddly enough, like that was the, it was the coolest thing for me to just be grounded every night when I would get my sleeping bag and I would see this thing and it's just like, it's that connection to, to home, to family and, and to, you know, to my daughters. And that was, that was an accident.

And it was a hugely successful thing for me. It really helped me stay grounded on that mission. So those things can come out of nowhere. Things that you were so important to you when you launched can be less important in space, and things that were just an afterthought in space can become the absolute most important thing that you possibly that you can possibly take.

So I think overall, we did a pretty good job with that. And I've said it before, but just listening to them communicate with their families on those tiny little moments that we got to communicate with our families, we each got two chances to call. And for me, that's one of the most lasting impacts of this mission. Was listening to your friend and crewmate go into this other world with this headset on for 15 minutes and giggle and laugh, and every one of us cried.

I mean, nobody didn't get through those things without crying. And. And then you would take those headphones off at the end and it was like coming back into a different universe when you would come out of that family conference and it just reminded you how important that is right there.

Okay, we'll take one more here in the room and then head to our phone bridge. Go ahead.

[Jishnu Nair, Houston Business Journal, relays questions from the outlet's younger readers: with NASA saying it wants to fly these missions more often and get humans to the Moon and beyond, what is one piece of advice each crew member would give to young people looking skyward now.]

You want to just go right down the line?

I would say the big thing for me, and we saw it in this mission is I think we're starting we're starting to lose scope as as a society that you do have to go do things like you have to go do really hard, really challenging things and you have to go move the needle. And that actually means like bending metal and fueling rockets, or that means inventing a new way to do surgery. But we have got to get our hands out there and engage our hands, and our minds have got to be engaged.

I think, you know, there's a there's a professional path that folks are going to take to get into whatever profession. And then, you know, that's kind of a springboard to get this job. This is no one's first job. It's not an entry level thing, but I would encourage them to start now before they even are on that journey to really get comfortable asking questions and then listening to their peers, but also to their mentors.

I think that has been a game changer for all of us. There's so much to know in this business and none of us knows it all. Yes, it is my call sign, but I do not know everything. And we we have to rely on the wisdom of the village so much that it needs to be a part of.

It needs to be unconscious. You need to be unconsciously competent at asking a question, or when people are just having a conversation that impacts something, you need to know to just savor it, take it in and make it a part of what you believe. The three things I've always encouraged young people to do, I think, still apply to to be gritty or resilient, to be a lifelong learner and to be a good teammate.

So good. I love everything I've heard. The three things that I usually say, and I don't think they've changed are find your fulfillment. I used to say find your passion, but for me, it's changed to find what you can do the slowest for the longest and still absolutely love it and go in that direction.

Do what scares you. Path of least resistance isn't usually the path that will give the most back to the world, and give you the most sense of courage and confidence, and finally, support those around you. The benefits that compound when you support those around you and they support you back are just immeasurable.

Maybe the one I'll emphasize is just follow the example that people saw here. Don't do it alone and share what you're trying to accomplish with others, because you need the support of others to do big things. And so share your goals, be brave enough to share them, and then you'll be surprised how people surround you and lift you up to accomplish them. Nice.

All right, we'll head over to our phone for our next question is from Andrea with the Houston Chronicle.

[Andrea Leinfelder, Houston Chronicle, asks how the crew looked after their own mental health — rest and time to themselves — during a busy mission in which four people shared a very small volume.]

There wasn't much me time. There wasn't.

You know, we have sprinkled this in throughout other topics, but everything we did up there was a four person activity minimum. Everything how we ate, slept, flew the vehicle and some of it was on purpose. A lot of it, we realized real time when Jeremy exercised, we were all exercising. It was a team effort to the last, you know, period.

And so I just just want to emphasize that, that we, we actually, I think the me space was maybe a myth that 15 minute checkout when you're talking to your family, it did feel like being teleported out of the vehicle, but you teleported right back. And so we embraced that. That was a part of it though. That was a, a facet, a flavor, an ingredient of how we flew the mission.

And instead of trying to avoid it, I don't know, I'm speaking for us and we also don't do that often. But I would say from the proof in that pudding, we leaned into it and used it as a way to get through instead of trying to fight it the whole time.

Yeah, yeah.

I think the one thing I want to add is just we have tried over the last three years to be very good at communicating, which is what you just said. But just, just if you have a bad night of sleep or if something is angering you or if something is off in your balance, just talking about that to the other three crew members, just so they know where you are, where you're coming from today, and that it's not directed at them and they can help you out. And I don't know, as soon as you have the courage to kind of express that to a couple of friends, all of a sudden your friends are in it right alongside with you. And so we, we really got exceptionally good at communicating.

I didn't think we would get as exceptionally good at like crawling all over each other for ten days. But we did get good at that too. It's tight up there. But, but we, we really communicated extremely well on this mission from day one till day ten.

And now even now.

Okay, we'll take our next question from Josh with Space.com.

Cool.

Josh, if you're talking, we can't hear you.

While we wait, can I make one other comment? I just wanted to add, because, you know, folks have followed, I want to go back and add one piece to this previous question. Thank you for asking about mental health. It is so important.

We have professional help as well. We have a team of operational psychologists and psychiatrists that help us skill up to be ready to accomplish things like this. And so we did not just do that on our own. We have professional help just like we do simulations of entry and ascent launch.

We have folks that help us navigate the challenges of, we call it behavioral health and performance, but of mental and team preparation.

Yeah, great.

Great point. Okay, we'll head over to Alicia with Mashable.

Alicia Adamczyk, Mashable — question paraphrased[Alicia Adamczyk, Mashable, notes that before 2025 NASA repeatedly said the first Artemis landing would carry the first woman and first person of colour to the Moon, that this language has since been removed from agency materials, and asks each crew member whether NASA should still hold to that original commitment for the first landing, and why.]

It's good? It's a good question.

Yeah, it's a great question. Our understanding of that statement was basically that the the Artemis campaign as a whole will usher in an era where that is true and that it would happen naturally because our astronaut corps, because of decisions we made collectively, decades ago, represents our entire country and our entire world in many ways, we're proud of that. We're proud that the people in our core achieve excellence and strive for excellence in all the same ways. And the fact is, you don't have to try too hard to make that come true.

To make that be the reality of this mission, you'd actually have to try harder to not make that be true in the astronaut corps that we have. And I do think that's something to celebrate, that decades ago, we made the decision that everyone who has a dream gets to work equally hard to achieve that dream, and that if we're not going for all and by all, we aren't answering humanity's call to explore, which is what we do here.

Awesome, perfect.

All right. Our next question is from Claire Cameron with Scientific American.

[Claire Cameron, Scientific American, asks the crew to say more about the challenges they faced aboard the spacecraft — the toilet problems in particular — and whether there is anything they wish had been different or better on the capsule.]

I do not mind starting this. We probably all want to throw a little bit in. I just want to say 100% point blank. That was a wonderful toilet.

The toilet worked great where we had an issue and it was it was an issue for sure. Is that our primary vent line, which takes, you know, when you go to the bathroom at the end of doing that, you flush the toilet, the toilet flushes just fine. But then when the liquid went out the bottom of the toilet, it got clogged up in our vent line and our tank can only hold about, you know, maybe, maybe I'm guessing like under ten urination events. I guess that tank can hold and then it's got to be dumped.

And for the first two days of the mission, it was fun to watch that thing get dumped. I mean, that is an interesting thing to see out the window. It's just like a billion little tiny flecks of of ice heading out into deep space. But that primary vent line got clogged or gunked or we'll wait and see exactly what the technical reason was.

And that put a limitation on us. So I definitely for those great engineers that made that toilet, I don't want them hanging their head low. They should hang it very high. It was it was a great piece of gear.

And then what did we, what have we learned? Like there's always things we need to improve. I think the thing, just speaking for myself, the thing that really surprised me on this mission was how well the spacecraft handled and how well the the machine supported the four humans on board. We were a little cold the first two days.

They warmed it up. They like they fixed everything that we asked. The thing that we need to probably work on for the next mission is now we know the things that we didn't know before we launched. Like when you want to go into a bag and get lunch, but you got to dig through a thousand different things to get to lunch.

It makes it really hard and cumbersome to eat in a very busy day. There are different ways that we could manage the cabin during workout. Like we have learned all these little nuances that we can make. Artemis three, four, five just bring the gains down on those things so that they can focus, which we've always said on their task, rendezvous with spacecraft in orbit, getting on the lunar surface and building a sustainable presence on the on the moon.

Like we hold the key to that lock. And we've already started debriefing so that they don't have to worry about that lock.

Our next question is from Robert Pearlman with collectSPACE.com.

[Robert Pearlman, collectSPACE.com, asks that if the U.S. Postal Service wanted to repeat Apollo 8 history and issue a stamp based on a single photograph from the mission, which photo each of them would choose and who among them took it.]

The four of us hugging were. His face is hanging out the bottom. That's the stamp I want. Yes.

Yes. [LAUGHTER]

Oh, the country does not need that. [LAUGHTER]

It does.

Yeah, we need it.

You know, I think something that we all feel and we try to share is how much we want to reflect back to you all how we did this, not we as a crew, we as countries and as humans did this. And so what popped into my head as you were asking, that is the picture of the earth as we started to go farther from the earth. And we've got this beautiful one where you can see the northern lights, because I when we were getting really close to the moon, talking about looking at you and how beautiful earth is, that represents how far we were. But it shows you that's.

I cannot overstress that like we we did this together. And so that picture to me is at least representative of, of a lot for this mission. I also haven't looked through many of the pictures. Like I said, I've been in my home for almost a week and, and we are very intentionally not trying to take individual photo credit for things, but may I, can I share that specific one?

He took that picture and he worked really hard at he captured a lot of things that we did not think we would be able to get on film. And so that picture was Reid Wiseman, and it was not the first try. He made the adjustments to the camera and and got a great picture. So yeah, congrats.

It was awesome. It is awesome.

Thank you.

All right, we'll head back here in the room right here in the middle.

[Mark Kirkman, NASASpaceflight, asks Reid Wiseman to compare how Orion handled during the proximity-operations demonstration against the simulator and against Dragon, and asks whether the crew has a “Mach 34”-style patch yet.]

Oh.

Man, you're hitting all the things that I'm loving. So we've used Joy a lot. So I'm going to say test pilot, joy test pilot. Heaven feels good as well.

But I mean, first of all, it's an immense privilege to fly a spaceship that just at all. And to fly a new spaceship is kind of an unreal privilege. And I'm really glad we all got to fly it. That that is probably the most important thing.

You have a perspective across. This really represents the perspectives in the astronaut office. And so that really matters. We give numbers as handling rating, handling quality ratings.

But the most important thing in handling qualities are the pilot comments. And so you've got comments from an entire crew. It flew better than the SIM in all areas. I think that's probably the easiest way to say it.

And it was just the integration of the full thing, the crew being there, seeing the same actual, you know, we have windows in the simulator, but their screens, individual computer screens. So we see the same thing because it's trying to simulate parallax, but it means we're looking at actually different images. And so we're trying to call out measurements on something that is not the same thing. This camera was showing us the same thing.

And Christina took a video and pictures of our upper stage, and I didn't see it for several hours, maybe days after, and it blew me away. I was like, wow, that that was right out the window the whole time. Yeah, the training worked. The team that came up with that plan was fantastic, and I owe them some handling qualities ratings.

I haven't filled out that that survey yet. It's coming, it's coming. But it flew like a dream. And I'm really glad everybody got to fly it.

I want to add one thing and then I'm going to throw Jeremy directly under the bus. But one thing that I want to just say really more to the NASA team than to the to the media, is that first day was that was a daunting first day. And we were looking ahead of that day. All four of us knew how to do rendezvous and demo just in case somebody had motion sickness or was was out of the picture.

But it really reminded me that when you are extremely highly trained and very prepared, you can go knock that thing out. I mean, we, this crew went and knocked out rendezvous and prox demonstration. I would I mean, I haven't looked at the tapes, but it felt flawless on board and I was running procedures. He was flying the spacecraft.

Jeremy and Christina were watching the interim cryogenic propulsion stage out the window and mapping our distance to that the entire way in. And it was just like clockwork, clockwork, clockwork. And we had just gotten to space and he's never been in space before. And so when you sit, you can wring your hands forever.

Go, no, we shouldn't do this to the crew. There's no way they're going to be ready. They're going to be tired, they're going to be sick. They're not going to want to do this and train them and set them loose.

And we can go do that thing. And then leading into the demo, you just got to tell the story because I love that story.

In the simulations, we were we were all worried about, you know, what? If we don't separate, there's a few procedures you have to run. There's a couple different flavors of this. And trying to tell whether you've separated and the camera views.

ET cetera, et cetera. And then when it came right down to it, we're floating there. We're waiting for separation. And all of a sudden, bang, loud bang, we're all pinned to the floor.

And we all looked at each other like, well, I guess we separated or it exploded. [LAUGHTER]

I think Jeremy turned. He's like, I think we just got ejected off of that thing. It was it was the biggest force we felt on the whole mission. Those are some legitimate spring pushers.

Yeah. Thanks.

It's in work. The patch is in work. We the number that we saw on the displays. And, you know, I, I was very in tune with what Orion thinks it's going to do.

It was 38.8, 38.89 was the mark. And so a patch is in work, but it depends on how you measure that number. It's actually challenging to measure from space. So we there will be there will be a new one coming out when we figure it out.

We'll take our next question from Eric. Go ahead.

Eric Berger, Ars Technica — question paraphrased[Eric Berger, Ars Technica, notes how rigorous this single lunar-flyby mission was and asks how realistic the crew now feels it is that humans will actually land on the Moon, put down roots, and establish a semi-permanent settlement — something quite different from Apollo.]

Yeah. Well, I think we probably we haven't talked about this exactly as a crew. We talked about how that ignition event made us feel prior to the mission was, which was that it pumped us up. We were very much lifted up by the notion that we would get to contribute to astronauts doing this all over again, much sooner than we thought that we were going to be focused on the moon base, on surface operations.

And I would say, if nothing else, we are feeling even more excited and just ready to take that on as an agency. A couple of things contribute to that. One is how well the team and the spacecraft took care of us. We had things on this mission that you might think weren't really necessary in just a quick jaunt to the moon, but we made it happen.

We exercised along the way is a great example. When we got back to earth, we all, within 1 or 2 days, were in surface spacewalk suits, doing surface geology tasks and doing them well and able to complete an entire battery of very challenging surface tasks in a in a spacewalking spacesuit for surface missions. There's just so many examples where we've shown that we can all of the analysis that we do prior to missions, all of the talking that we do, all of the what ifs, all of the just coming up with every possible operational workaround for anything you might encounter. We can do that and we do.

So we figure out all these things that could go wrong, all the extra resources it's going to take to do these things that sound completely outlandish and impossible right now. But the truth is, accomplishing the near-impossible is exactly what we do and what we just showed that we can do.

I don't really want to add anything to that because I was so perfect. I'm going to say one last little thing, which is I did have a little weird technical epiphany, Eric, while we were out there, which was we just went like 250,000 miles away. And I'm telling you right now, if we had a first flight lander on board that thing, I know at least three of my crewmates would have been in it trying to land on the moon. Like the jump.

When you think about Apollo. Apollo eight went around the moon, nine stayed in Leo, ten almost landed on the moon. And I've talked to a few of those gentlemen in the past. And they said if they had enough fuel, they would have done it.

It is, it's not, oh, I'm going to eat these words. It's not the leap I thought it was. Once we're around the moon, we're in the vacuum of space. We got a six door vehicle that's handling great.

If you had given us the keys to the lander, we would have taken it down and landed on the moon. It is not the leap I thought it was. 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 it's doable soon.

This mission taught me that the unknown is way scarier than the known. Every single time we accomplished a mission test objective, we all looked at each other and were like, that actually went pretty well. That was actually not necessarily easy because it took a ton of work, but it was easy to accomplish as a team because we had put in the work. We know how to put in the work to make it accomplishable when the time comes.

Awesome.

Thank you. Eric, I'd like to add something that I think you're pulling out too, is, you know, I agree with everything that was said. We have to be willing to accept a little more risk than we were willing to accept in the past, and to just trust that we will figure it out in real time. We're not going to be able to pound everything flat before we go.

We're going to have to trust each other and crews and mission control to work through real problems. And it was very evident to us out there like this went really smoothly, super smoothly. I'm not surprised. Extraordinary team.

A lot of work was done in advance, but it was also very clear to us that it could get pretty bumpy. And whoever is going out there to do those things got to understand it could get real bumpy, real fast and it has to be ready to take that on.

Thanks, everybody. I'm going to just say one thing, Eric, it was awesome to hear you start this off by saying something was fun.

Thanks.

Okay, we'll take one more question here in the room and then head to our phone.

That's great.

[Mark Carreau, Aviation Week & Space Technology, asks how much longer the crew will be in post-mission care at Johnson Space Center and whether they have found it a valuable part of the mission.]

Oh.

That's a good question. So, you know, the program we use for flying to and from the International Space Station is kind of a cut and paste what we started with, and then we whittled it away and tried to make it appropriate for this mission duration. So there is a dedicated two week period of medical checks, science collection and strength and conditioning rehabilitation re-adaptation. And then, you know, there's out to four months where we're going to do the public affairs and appearance events.

There's about a 45 day cut over where we're actually the person we work for will change. So there actually, there's a sort of a gradual redeployment or a gradual move out of the post-flight. But it started off with the same basic plan that we use for ISS, knowing that this is a short mission. So we may not need reconditioning for 30 or 45 days like I did post-ISS, and we've just been trying to tailor it.

One reason, though, that it's really important. I mean, I felt like a million bucks on Friday, so today I'm up to 1,000,006 bucks. [LAUGHTER] But it's important for us to run these processes out because we are still making changes and learning ways that we're going to support the 30 and 45 day missions of Artemis three, four, five. And so it's really important for us to keep practicing keeping our heads in the game. Yeah.

All right. We will head back to our phone bridge. Josh with Spacecom. Let's try this again.

[Josh, Space.com, reconnects after an audio dropout.]

Yes we have.

We have you loud and clear.

[Josh, Space.com, asks that when Hollywood inevitably makes the Artemis II movie, which part of the mission most needs to be told accurately — the part that tells the story the filmmakers most need to get right.]

I would just start by saying a movie wouldn't do it justice. It has to be a series. There's so much to talk about.

Okay, we will take our next question.

From.

Whoa, wait, wait, we got to get we got to honor that one a little. Just give us a second, Courtney.

I guess the thing that might be hardest to convey, no matter what the platform would be, how much it meant to us to bring everyone along with us, and how much it meant to us to hear that the mission had an impact. I cannot overstate how important that was to us. It was every bit as important as accomplishing the technical goals, and being there for our NASA teammates was to make this the world's mission, and for it to have a positive impact on as much of the world as possible.

All right. Our next question is from Marcia Dunn with The Associated Press.

Marcia Dunn, Associated Press — question paraphrased[Marcia Dunn, Associated Press, asks Reid Wiseman for a “report card” on the Orion heat shield after reentry — what NASA is hearing about how it fared and whether there was much damage.]

It's a great question. It's you know, as as a for sure. We need to see what NASA says on the data we have got to they are going to do to this heat shield what they did to Artemis one. And we are going to fine tooth comb every single.

Not even every molecule, every atom on this heat shield. But we, the four of us, when we got off the Navy ship, the USS John P Murtha, we were getting ready to get on the helicopters. And I think we all kind of agreed that we heard that integrity was in the well deck there, and we did not want to we did not feel right leaving that ship without doing two things. Number one, we wanted to see our spacecraft.

We wanted to go look at that spacecraft. And number two, there was a gentleman who led the investigation team after Artemis one, single name Luis. But he managed a great team. And and we heard he was on the ship and we just I needed to hug that man.

I needed to go see that man and thank him because the data that they pulled from Artemis one, I think Artemis one is probably the most studied heat shield in the history of space flight, for sure. The history of human spaceflight, maybe the shuttle in its early days, I don't know. But but they figured out what was wrong with that heat shield. They determined root cause of that heat shield.

And then they left it up to NASA to decide, are we going to fly a different heat shield, or are we going to change the trajectory and fly as is? And they gave us NASA the options to do what we thought was right, and we modified our trajectory. We came in with what's called a horizontal target line, somewhere around 1700 nautical miles. We originally like out at 2300, and we were going to float through the atmosphere for a long time.

But that was where the Artemis one heat shield was seeing problems. So we came in fast and we came in hot. And I will tell you, looking out the window that whole way in, it was a smooth ride. It was a very smooth ride.

I think Ike and I maybe saw two moments of a touch of char loss. Certainly when we went up to the vehicle, there was a little bit of char loss on what's called the shoulder, which is kind of where the heat shield meets the the structure of the cone, shape of the of the spacecraft. But the bottom we leaned under and looked at the bottom of that thing. And for, for, for humans, just looking at a heat shield, it looked wonderful to us.

It looked great. And that ride in that ride in was really amazing.

All right, we'll take another question on the phone bridge from Anthony Leone with Spectrum News.

[Anthony Leone, Spectrum News, asks what advice each crew member has for the future Artemis crew that will land on the Moon.]

I'm taking up a lot of CO2 today. I'll keep this short. You have got to invest in each other. That's the number one thing I would say.

After that, I would tell them to well, something that was shared with us from the crewed flight test. The Boeing CFT crew ask more questions.

That's a great one.

Yeah.

I would say in addition to those, remember that you are part of a team. Something that we do well is we always think our teams for what they've done. And something I always add to that is congratulations, because to say thank you sometimes to me seems like there's an assumption there that we're the one that did it and everyone else supported, but that's not how I see it. I see it as we all are 100% teammates.

If anything, we did the least. And congratulations say that every day to your teams, your teammates. You're probably the last one that got added to this team.

That's a great answer.

Yeah, that's a tough one to follow. I'd probably if I had to give them some different advice, I'd give it back to the technical. And just that really getting to know the parts of your spacecraft that you could end up, you know, alone. Just we thought a lot in this crew.

We spent a lot of time thinking about what if we don't have mission control and what are the critical things to keep us going long enough to get back in touch with mission control? And that's I think that always needs to be an area of focus. Great.

Okay, we have time for one more question in the room. If I could get a raise of hands. Aaron. Hi.

Aaron Anthony for CBS, mission.

[Aaron Anthony, CBS, asks Christina Koch whether she has any specific lessons learned or advice for the astronaut who is selected to be the first woman to walk on the Moon.]

For me, I think the biggest word about all of the superlatives that you're going to encounter, all of the things that you're going to be asked to do, react, to be a part of, contribute to is it's humbling. And if you remember that being part of a team is your main goal. And the main thing that that you put ahead of everything else, that when the world tries to make the accomplishment something different than what it really is, which is a team accomplishment, you will know and the things that you say will reflect how you really see it.

And it's beautiful.

All right. That is all the time we have for today. Thank you to the Artemis two crew for your time today and for such an inspiring mission. And thank you to our media for your continued interest in NASA's Artemis two mission.

We'll see you next time.