Artemis 2 Astronauts Reflect on Lunar Flyby Experience and Unity at NASA Press Conference

During their initial press conference after landing back on Earth, the Artemis 2 team—Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen—shared insights from their ten-day journey around the moon. They experienced a solar eclipse, noted micrometeoroid strikes, and took extraordinary images of both Earth and the moon. Upon returning, Koch felt a sense of disorientation, as if she were still in microgravity. This mission achieved milestones for the greatest distance traveled by humans from Earth and marked the first human presence near the moon since 1972. Koch became the first woman to orbit the moon, Glover the first Black astronaut, and Hansen the first astronaut from outside the U.S. NASA aims to expedite the Artemis program, with Artemis 3 planned for 2024 and Artemis 4 for 2028.