{"id":575876,"date":"2026-04-10T12:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T12:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/575876\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T12:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T12:22:08","slug":"artemis-ii-crew-members-send-heartwarming-messages-to-family-before-splashdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/575876\/","title":{"rendered":"Artemis II crew members send heartwarming messages to family before splashdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Artemis II crew sent heartwarming messages to their families on their final day of their historic 10-day moon mission ahead of Friday\u2019s splashdown <\/a>in the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n

The four astronauts, who launched from the Kennedy Space Center on April 1, expressed how much they loved their children, nieces and nephews, and addressed the next generation of space explorers during Thursday\u2019s call with Katie Britt (R-Alabama), NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, and other lawmakers.<\/p>\n

Commander Reid Wiseman<\/a> was the first to speak and told his daughters Ellie and Katey he loves them and said their support had been \u201cunbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The four Artemis II astronauts float in the cramped living quarters of their Orion capsule. CSPAN<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think they knew what this mission really meant when we launched, but they have learned through the outpouring of public support, their friend\u2019s support and family\u2019s support,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cReally, the world has come together. We have seen it and we have seen it through their eyes too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it has been a very proud moment for me as their father to see the joy in their expression and the way they email and communicate when we have private conferences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canadian Jeremy Hansen spoke about how he learns more from his kids, Devon, Ashley, and Kaitlin, than they learn from him \u2013 before offering them a piece of advice.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the one thing I would remind you, and I think is worth reminding ourselves and other youth is that all you have to do on any given day is just get up and do your best and try to find joy in your day and try to contribute in a meaningful and positive way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we as humans, we put too much pressure on ourselves, looking for perfection.\u201d<\/p>\n

The astronauts share a group hug. Nasa\/UPI\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Christina Koch, the only woman on the 10-day lunar flyby, thanked her nine nieces and nephews for the letters they wrote and pictures they drew.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou had beautiful earths and rockets, and they truly touched my mission, and I feel like you\u2019re here with me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Pilot Victor Glover spoke about how he and his wife are looking forward to supporting their four children, Genesis, Maya, Joia, and Corrine.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe spent years coaching you, but we are very much in that transition to being cheerleaders and just rooting for you in life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

He also reached out to budding astronauts, saying: \u201cAnd to the future citizens out there, the same sentiment applies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope this mission is giving you something that you can take and put in your pocket, or in your heart and mind that you keep with you, but it\u2019s not because we want you to see what we\u2019ve tried to show you. It\u2019s because we want you to take this and build a vocabulary to explain the world to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Artemis II astronauts recently took a page from the playbook of the Apollo 8 crew \u2013 naming craters<\/a> \u2013 as they hurtled back towards Earth.<\/p>\n

The crew honored Wiseman\u2019s late wife Carroll, who died of cancer in 2020.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust for me personally, that was kind of the pinnacle moment of the mission for me,\u201d a touched Wiseman said.<\/p>\n

The USS John P. Murtha is set to collect the crew after splashdown. Expeditionary Strike Group 3<\/p>\n

Jim Lovell famously named a lunar peak Mount Marilyn in honor of his wife in 1968.<\/p>\n

Three craters are named after Lovell and crew members Frank Borman and William Anders.<\/p>\n

The crew\u2019s Orion capsule is set to splash down around 8:07 p.m. off the coast of San Diego and they will be recovered by the USS John P. Murtha naval ship.<\/p>\n

With Post wires<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Artemis II crew sent heartwarming messages to their families on their final day of their historic 10-day…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[42141,718,79,193,13059],"class_list":["post-575876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-artemis-ii","tag-nasa","tag-science","tag-space","tag-space-program"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}