Reflecting on Artemis II and more than a decade of space coverage.
Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets and beaches near the Kennedy Space Center, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch Systems rocket take off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center April 1.
Our host, Brendan Byrne, was there through it all. From launch to splash down, he reported on the crew’s journey.
Hear more about Byrne’s coverage of Artemis II and more about the mission in the newest transparency corner.
Artemis II in the classroom
Along with captivating the public, Artemis II is inspiring the next generation of lunar explorers in the classroom.
At Goldsboro Elementary in Sanford, Florida, Robert Wakelyn oversees the magnet school’s space lab. Just like art or music class, students get to stop by Wakelyn’s “out of this world” classroom to learn about space, including the Artemis II mission.
“I have a scrolling led my screen that says we are the Artemis generation,” Wakelyn said. “I've had that probably since Artemis I, where it's just getting ingrained in their head, they are part of the Artemis generation with the idea of, it's not just about those four astronauts that are now have gone and returned to Earth. It is also about them what they have the potential to go and eventually become as well.”
In his space lab, Wakelyn has three main areas: mission control, the experiment bay and planetscape.
The planetscape is made to look just like the moon or mars, and the terrain is surrounded by dark walls and a projector so students can learn on what feels like on a different planet. The platescape is where Wakelyn’s students watched Artemis II take off and splashdown.
During his lessons on Artemis II, Wakelyn said he teaches his students that Artemis II is just the beginning.
“It's where the future of humanity is trying to be pushed,” Wakelyn said. “Going forward, it's not like we want to just return to the moon, it’s the idea of having a presence on the moon, and that they have the potential to one day be involved with such a historic event of how humanity continues to go beyond Earth in a permanent fashion.”
For some of his students like fifth grader Janelle Young, watching the launch made her feel almost old, since she remembers her family members talking about the Apollo missions.
“I remember when my grandma used to talk about watching the moon landing for the first time,” Young said. “I was like well, this is kind of similar. So, I was like, this is kind of weird. It's kind of history repeating itself, but I get to see it for the first time.”
For Young, she said the coolest part of the mission for her was watching the crew work in space.
“They were just floating around doing their thing, like they knew what was going on, they knew what they were supposed to do, how they're supposed to do it,” Young said. “And then I was like, well, they must have trained and practiced so many times that they're just so normal in space. I would have been losing my mind like, ‘what am I doing here?’”
Another fellow fifth grader, Shambhavee Singh expressed a similar sentiment to Young. Plus, for Singh, she said she had never seen a rocket launch.
“I think the coolest part was when the solar eclipse… when it happened, and they were, like, close to the moon, and they saw it, like on the dark side,” Singh said. “I've never seen, a picture of that. So, I think it was really cool to like to see that.”
For Theodore Brown, another fifth grader at Goldsboro, he said at first watching the launch it felt like any other launch. Plus, sadly, Brow couldn’t see the launch because of cloud cover. However, after talking about it in class, those feelings changed.
“Talking about it in the classroom and seeing the video feed of them in the rocket was a pretty cool experience, because we don't usually do that,” Brown said. “I just feel like this rocket launch is one to remember, because we haven't been to the moon since the Apollo missions.”
Veteran NASA astronaut’s thoughts on Artemis II
Artemis II sent four astronauts around the moon in a little under 10 days, ending a 50-year drought in human lunar missions .
Veteran NASA astronaut Winston Scott spent over 24 days in space on Space Shuttle missions STS-72 Endeavour and STS-87 Columbia. He said he thinks the Artemis II hype will extend to Artemis III.
“I think people are looking for good, positive events,” Scott said. “We hear so much negative stuff on the news, but something like this just makes you realize what a great country we live in and [appreciate] the really smart people all over who can do something monumental like this."
Scott said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman’s commercial astronaut experience gives NASA a needed, out-of-the-box outlook.
“[Isaacman is] an experienced astronaut, but he doesn't come from the establishment that might have placed limitations on him,” Scott said. “He comes from outside of the agency, and I think that's what we need at this time.”
Isaacman isn’t the only new perspective included in the Artemis II mission. The crew included Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen -- the first black person, first woman and first non-American respectively to make it to the moon.
“It's a testament to how far we've come in the space program, and how far we've come in America,” Scott said. “The barriers that were in place to people of color and women 50 years ago, 60 years ago, are no longer there. [...] The only barriers to people are incompetence. We live in a world now where if you're qualified, then you can do it, and that's where we should be.”
Artemis III prep begins with launch pad’s crawler transport
NASA is already preparing for Artemis III after the success of Artemis II, the mission that returned humans to the moon for the first time in half a century.
The Crawler-Transporter – the massive vehicle that moves the mobile launch pad and the SLS rocket that launches Orion from the hangar to the launch site – will start its trek at Kennedy Space Center later this week. It will return the launch platform to the Vehicle Assembly Building, where the assembly of Artemis III’s rocket will begin.
John Giles, NASA’s Crawler Element Operations Manager, oversees the Crawler-Transporter. His team will adjust the 22-million-pound load to keep it as level as possible on the incline in their path.
“It's exciting and yet high focused attention,” Giles said. “You don't want to do anything wrong. You want to make sure everything goes perfect, which it has every time.”
The fuel tank for the SLS rocket will join other parts of the rocket already at the Kennedy Space Center later this month.
“After all this hard work for Artemis II, everybody was kind of hoping, okay, we're gonna celebrate this achievement and this milestone. We're gonna take a few days off,” Giles said. “They immediately said, ‘Oh no, we're gonna roll back right away. We're gonna start processing for Artemis III.’ And we're like, wow, okay, they're serious about this.”
NASA aims to launch Artemis III in 2027, where it will stay in low-Earth orbit and test commercial lunar landers from SpaceX or Blue Origin. The crew will soon be named, according to NASA.
Find more about the crawler and Giles’s work here.
