On Friday evening, four astronauts — three from the U.S. and one Canadian — will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere after a10-day journey that brought them farther than humans have ever gone into space.
Holly Cohen, the Astronomy Programs Coordinator at the Buffalo Museum of Science, has spent the week teaching students on spring break about Artemis II.
Sharon Cantillon
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Courtesy of Buffalo Museum of Science
These Discovery Campers are building and testing rockets in the museum’s Buffalo In Space exhibit during summer camp, 2025.
“This is a really wonderful time to feel moon joy and to keep up with these astronauts,” she said. “But this will not be our last opportunity. We have several more missions coming in the next few years. We do plan to land astronauts on the moon, as long as we can keep them safe and healthy, and there is just going to be so much innovation on the horizon.”
As students learned about the mission and space travel in general, curious questions about how big the universe is, how space flight works and even questions that might seem silly were all quite relevant.
“Almost immediately anytime I talk about humans living in space is, of course: ‘How do they go to the bathroom?'” Cohen said. “Of course it’s funny, but it’s a really valid question. You’re in microgravity, everything is weightless. You cannot just go sit on a throne with some water in it. People’s jobs and education and creativity and problem-solving skills have to go into figuring out, well, how do we do our business in space?”
Cohen said the museum has seen more visitors this week, as spring break coincided with the astronauts’ journey around the moon. The Orion capsule is expected to start its 13-minute journey to Earth starting at 7:53 p.m. Friday and will land in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California shortly after 8 p.m.