{"id":403115,"date":"2026-04-17T08:49:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T08:49:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/403115\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T08:49:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T08:49:16","slug":"artemis-ii-astronauts-describe-joy-of-returning-to-earth-after-nasa-moon-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/403115\/","title":{"rendered":"Artemis II astronauts describe joy of returning to Earth after NASA moon mission"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although it has been nearly a week since the four Artemis II astronauts completed their mission around the moon<\/a>, the crew said Thursday that they have not yet fully come down to Earth mentally or been able to reflect on the big moments of their journey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI haven\u2019t spent a lot of time processing all of this,\u201d NASA astronaut Victor Glover told NBC News in response to a question about the final moments of the flight, when the Orion capsule streaked through Earth\u2019s atmosphere at more than 24,000 miles per hour.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will say it was just a very intense moment, because we had never seen or felt this before. Everything was important, every noise, every mechanism,\u201d Glover said.<\/p>\n

Glover and his crewmates \u2014 NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen \u2014 <\/a>were the first people to launch aboard NASA\u2019s Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule. Tensions were especially high during their final descent because the spacecraft had a known design flaw in its heat shield<\/a>; NASA is still investigating the details of the shield\u2019s performance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could tell we were in a fireball,\u201d Glover said, describing the plasma outside the spacecraft during atmospheric re-entry. He admitted his first thought was, \u201cIs it supposed to be that big?\u201d<\/p>\n

When the hatch opened after they splashed down, Koch said, \u201cI was completely overcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI just screamed. I was so happy,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was just pure elation and just a visceral, emotional reaction to not only being home, but people there coming to us and bringing us out \u2014 just unspeakable joy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ReidNASA’s Artemis II crew \u2014 Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen \u2014 at a news conference in Houston on Thursday. Ashley Landis \/ AP<\/p>\n

The Artemis II mission notched a number of firsts. Wiseman, Koch, Glover and Hansen became the first people ever to see the entire far side of the moon<\/a> with their own eyes, as well as the first astronauts to witness a solar eclipse from the moon<\/a>. The crew set a new record for the farthest distance ever traveled from Earth.<\/p>\n

During their lunar flyby, the astronauts snapped stunning photos of the eclipse, as well as of the moon\u2019s cratered landscape and rugged terrain.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the sun eclipsed behind the moon, I turned to Victor and I said, \u2018I don\u2019t think humanity has evolved to the point of being able to comprehend what we were looking at right now,\u2019 because it was otherworldly,\u201d Wiseman said Thursday in a NASA briefing.<\/p>\n

Besides the lunar flyby, one of the most attention-grabbing moments of the mission came when Hansen told mission controllers at NASA\u2019s Johnson Space Center in Houston on April 6 that the crew wanted to \u201chonor their mission by naming two craters on the moon.\u201d<\/p>\n

The astronauts proposed naming one crater Integrity, after the name they had given their Orion spacecraft. For the second crater, Hansen said in an emotional speech, the crew proposed the name Carroll, for Wiseman\u2019s late wife<\/a>, who died of cancer in 2020.<\/p>\n

Wiseman said the dedication was not his idea. His three crewmates hatched the plan, he said, and Hansen pulled Wiseman aside to tell him before the launch.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was like, \u2018Hey, the three of us talked. … We think we can actually do this. We\u2019ve talked to the science team,\u201d Wiseman told NBC News.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was the most beautiful thing I\u2019d heard in my entire life,\u201d he continued. \u201cShe was an amazing human being, and she\u2019s the mother of my two daughters. And what man on this planet deserves a gift like that, to have your crew be so thoughtful and to do something so caring and so deep and so meaningful.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the NASA briefing, Wiseman and Glover said that since landing, they have had a whirlwind of medical testing and debriefs with the Artemis II science team.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have not had that decompression,\u201d Wiseman said. \u201cWe have not had that reflection time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shortly after splashing down, the astronauts were flown to a U.S. Navy ship for medical evaluations. While on board, Wiseman said he requested a visit from ship\u2019s chaplain, despite not being a religious person.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen that man walked in \u2014 I\u2019d never met him before in my life, but I saw the cross on his collar, and I just broke down in tears,\u201d Wiseman said during the NASA briefing. \u201cIt\u2019s very hard to fully grasp what we just went through.\u201d<\/p>\n

After journeying a total of more than 695,000 miles during their mission, all four astronauts described the joy of returning to their families<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat moment just has so much anticipation behind it,\u201d Koch told NBC News, adding that she started thinking about reuniting with her family early in the mission, while on the way to the moon. <\/p>\n

Still, once back on Earth, it took time to readjust.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time I\u2019ve been waking up, or in the first few days, I thought I was floating,\u201d Koch said during the NASA briefing. \u201cI truly thought I was floating, and I had to convince myself I wasn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

During their first night back on Earth, the astronauts said, they slept near each other in the Navy ship\u2019s medical bay, separated by curtains, but it felt strange after sleeping so close in space.<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked them to open the curtains,\u201d Hansen said, \u201cbut then I fell asleep and they closed them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The astronauts said they were largely unaware during the mission that their trip and personal stories<\/a> had garnered so much attention.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we were told really, through talking a couple times with our families, was that there was an impact,\u201d Koch said during the NASA briefing. \u201cWhen my husband looked me in the eye on that video call and said, \u2018No, really, you\u2019ve made a difference,\u2019 it brought tears to my eyes, and I said, \u2018That\u2019s all we ever wanted.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although it has been nearly a week since the four Artemis II astronauts completed their mission around the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61,60,82,247],"class_list":{"0":"post-403115","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}