The four astronauts aboard the Artemis II mission's Orion spacecraft spoke to the press from space for the first time since completing a lunar flyby that took them a record distance from earth.
After becoming the first humans to directly observe the far-side of the moon, emotions are running high as the crew prepares to reenter the earth's atmosphere and splash down on Friday in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast.
"Human minds should not go through what these just went through," said NASA's Artemis II mission commander Reid Wiseman.
"We have a lot that we just need to think about and journal and write, and then we'll get the full feeling of what we just went through," he told the press conference.
Wiseman added witnessing a solar eclipse from space had a deep impact on him. "I'm actually in chills right now just thinking about it, my palms are sweating."
The crew's one Canadian member, mission specialist Jeremy Hansen, said he witnessed things "I just had never even imagined" while flying around the Moon's far side.
"We live on a fragile planet in the vacuum and the void of space."
On Monday, the crew's position of roughly 252,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) from Earth set a record held by the crew of Apollo 13 for 56 years.
'Riding a fireball through the atmosphere'
Mission pilot Victor Glover said he hadn't "even begun to process what we've been through," and was gearing up for reentry.
"There's so many more pictures, so many more stories … We've still got two more days, and riding a fireball through the atmosphere is profound as well."
In another high-risk phase of the mission, the Orion spacecraft will reach speeds of up to 23,839 mph (38,365 kph) as it reenters the Earth's atmosphere and is battered by intense heat brought on by atmospheric friction.
"I've actually been thinking about entry since April 3, 2023 when we got assigned to this mission," Glover said, when asked how he was feeling about the return.
Artemis looks to the future
Mission specialist Christina Koch, who in a previous mission set the record for the longest single space flight by a woman at 328 days, said the crew has formed a sense of "camaraderie."
"I will miss being this close with this many people and having a common purpose, a common mission, getting to work on it hard every day across hundreds of thousands of miles with a team on the ground," she said.
Although the conditions in the capsule were sometimes uncomfortable, Koch said that is part of pushing the limits of human space exploration.
"We can't explore deeper unless we are doing a few things that are inconvenient, unless we're making a few sacrifices, unless we're taking a few risks," she said.
The Artemis II mission is the first in a multibillion-dollar series that aims to return humans to the surface of the moon by 2028, and eventually establish a US moon base for a potential future mission to Mars.
Courtesy: DW
Bd-pratidin English/Lutful Hoque
