The astronauts aboard the Artemis II mission are called a crew, but they really regard themselves as a team, right down to how they move around the Orion spacecraft’s cabin. They’ve been intently focused on the overall success of the Artemis program, as there’s a lot at stake because it’s the first crewed deep-space flight in more than 50 years. The astronauts are acutely aware of that and how what they accomplish will impact future moon missions.
“Part of our ethos as a crew and our values from the very beginning were that this is a relay race,” mission specialist Christina Koch said during a virtual news conference with reporters Wednesday evening. “In fact, we have batons that we bought to symbolize, physically, that. We plan to hand them to the next crew. And every single thing we do is with them in mind.”
Koch referenced tasks she and the Orion crew have performed so far during their mission, such as manually piloting the spacecraft and ensuring that procedures are as they should be.
Watch this: Watch NASA’s Artemis II Launch to the Moon
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During the mission, the astronauts also shared an emotional moment with viewers back on Earth when they proposed naming one of the craters on the moon “Carroll,” in memory of Commander Reid Wiseman’s late wife, a nurse who died of cancer in 2020 at the age of 46. Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen made the proposal to Mission Control to name the crater on Orion’s lunar flyby.
Wiseman opened up about his feelings in that moment when asked during the press conference. “When Jeremy spelled Carroll’s name C A R R O L L, that’s when I was overwhelmed with emotion. I looked over and Christina was crying. I put my hand down on Jeremy’s hand as he was still talking. (It was right there on that rail.) And I could just tell he was trembling,” remembered Wiseman. “We all pretty much broke down right there. And just for me, personally, that was the pinnacle moment of the mission for me.”
Wiseman went on to say the moment was “where the four of us were the most forged, the most bonded, and we came out of that really focused on that day ahead.”
