‘Just This Lifeboat Hanging On’: Artemis II Astronauts Speak Of The Humanitarian Lessons Learned in Space

The Artemis II astronauts were overwhelmed when giving their first public remarks Saturday since their historic mission around the moon.

The crew’s Orion space capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off coast of San Diego on Friday, wrapping up a 10-day journey to the dark side of the moon.

“I have absolutely no idea what to say!” remarked Commander Reid Wiseman, who was first on the microphone. “Twenty-four hours ago, the Earth was that big out the window and we were doing Mach 39, and here we are back at Ellington at home,” he said at the event at Houston’s Ellington Field.

“No one down here is ever going to know what the four of us just went through, and it was the most special thing that will ever happen in my life,” Wiseman said. “This was not easy being 200,000-plus miles away from home. Like, before you launch, it feels like it’s the greatest dream on Earth. And when you’re out there, you just want to get back to your families and your friends. It’s a special thing to be a human, and it’s a special thing to be on planet Earth.”

Pilot Victor Glover said he wanted to thank God, “because, even bigger than my challenge trying to describe what we went through, the gratitude of seeing what we saw, doing what we did, and being with who I was with — It’s too big to just be in one body.”

Mission Specialist Christina Koch said, “What struck me wasn’t necessarily just Earth. It was all the blackness around it. Earth was just this lifeboat hanging on, disturbingly, in the universe.”

“Uh, oh,” she said as she began to choke up.

“I know I haven’t learned everything that this journey has yet to teach me. But there’s one new thing I know, and that is: Planet Earth, you are a crew!”

Canadian astronaut and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen said he wasn’t going to talk about science because “it’s the human experience that is extraordinary for us.”

“And I think I’ll start with gratitude,” he continued. “Gratitude for the bravery and the courage for the teams to be ‘no go’ when we were ‘no go,’ and ‘go’ when we were ‘go.’ That took a lot. And I don’t think people will really ever fully comprehend how well supported and trained we were. It is almost unbelievable.”

Watch the clip above via Fox News.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!