Artemis II crew on historic moon mission and what it means for Earth

Artemis II astronaut describes ‘the most unique thing’ he saw on the far side of the Moon 02:24

It’s been just under a week since the Artemis II crew touched down off the coast of San Diego, and as the four astronauts adjust to life on Earth, they’ve also had time to reflect on the scope of their trip around the moon, what their favorite parts of the mission were, and what it all meant.

Speaking to “CBS Evening News,” Commander Reid Wiseman, mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, and pilot Victor Glover, shared vivid memories of observing the moon’s striking features up close.

“For me, it was the terminator,” Glover said of his favorite part of the mission, referring to the barrier between night and day on the moon. He explained how the transition from light to dark highlighted the moon’s topography in a way he didn’t expect. “I could have spent all my time describing this part,” he said.

Koch said the best thing she saw was the outline of the moon’s mountains on its horizon.

“Because there’s no atmosphere, you could see the contours of the terrain, you could imagine yourself climbing it, venturing out and exploring it, it was really cool,” she said.

Hansen, meanwhile, described what he said looked like a “handprint” on the far side of the moon, telling CBS News: “Reid and I spent a lot of time talking about this handprint on the backside of the moon. »

For Wiseman, it was seeing a solar eclipse from space.

“It was the most unique and unexpected thing I saw during this entire mission,” he said. “It was beautiful and completely unexpected. My brain couldn’t process what I was looking at out the window. The entire moon in a matte black sphere right outside our window.”

But despite all these fantastic and unique shows, the crew is still excited to be back home.

“I don’t think you appreciate house and gravity and plumbing and showers until you leave the comfort of those things,” Glover said, adding, “I mean, my favorite thing to do is go home and sit in my sweatpants.”

“We’ve done a lot of science, medicine and bodybuilding,” since returning, he said. “So we’ve been pretty busy since we got back. And when I come home, it’s just nice to walk in the door and see my dog ​​and see my wife and my kids and lay on the couch.”

For Koch, she said the everyday “took on a new light for me.”

“When I go to the beach now, I look up at the blue sky and imagine what it looks like from far, far away, where it wasn’t an absolute, it wasn’t just a background to everything we see, it was small, compared to the universe around it,” she said.

The crew also reflected on what their trip around the Moon meant to the United States and the rest of the world, the optimism it brought them, and how they can hold on to those feelings.

“We have waited, this nation and the world have waited a long time to return to the Moon,” Wiseman said. “And creating something with human hands, bending all that metal, powering it with all the propellant, and then having the courage to fire up the engines and go, it’s an overwhelming moment.”

Hansen says it’s about “fighting the feeling of helplessness.”

“I feel it,” he said. “There are things going on in the world and I feel powerless to influence them. But really, if we just remember that inside every human being is an innate desire to do good, to lift each other up to help each other, it makes us feel good.”

“If we remember that, and every day we get up and try to do a little bit, to do our best to make the world around us a better place, that’s really all it’s going to take,” he said.

Koch said we should “never forget what it was like to let someone and a mission carry with them your hopes, your heart and your dreams.”

Wiseman admitted that the world and the crew of Artemis II would eventually “return to normal.”

“The color of this mission will fade with time, but what will never fade is that we came together as a world and we celebrated, and no one asked the world to celebrate this, the world did that, they all stood up, they all came together, they were all motivated by one thing,” he said. “And what that tells me is that we still have it. We all still have it. And if we have to come together and execute, we can come together and we can do incredible things on this planet.”

Glover recalls, “We started this journey in April 2023, explaining that this was not a marathon or a sprint, but a relay race. … We can’t wait to pass the baton.”