Artemis II crew: what it's like to travel at Mach 39

[0:00] i had the privilege of talking with all four astronauts today mission commander reed weissman [0:04] pilot victor glover and mission specialist christina cook and jeremy hansen first of all [0:10] it's incredible to meet you i feel like i i mean i'm sure everybody feels like they know you because [0:13] we all watched you so closely congratulations you'd read you'd said it's hard to grasp what [0:20] you all went through on the mission and obviously it's been a whirlwind ever since have you had time [0:25] have all of you had time to kind of just decompress and think about it we we've definitely taken some [0:32] time we've taken some time by ourselves we've taken some time with our families uh but this is it's a [0:36] process and it's going to continue to take more time like the the outpouring of support from around [0:41] the world and the amount of thanks we have to give back to the agencies that made this possible it's [0:45] going to take time i want to show some of the amazing images that you've captured um on on uh [0:51] read on your phone you did the earth setting behind the moon and i get i love that this was just like [0:57] you with your iphone i assume or whatever i found myself without a job as earth was disappearing behind [1:03] the moon and christina and victor were both doing scientific imagery at this point in time [1:08] and jeremy and i were sort of free float and i went up to our little tiny docking hatch window which is [1:13] it's no bigger than that anderson and i held the i couldn't really even get my eye up there but i could [1:17] get the camera the phone up there i was like oh my goodness gracious i i have [1:21] got to hit record so what is that that is that's earth's setting behind the moon as we call it that [1:26] is tiny earth and it is beautiful and it is setting behind the far side of the moon you described it [1:31] as like watching a sunset at the beach from the most foreign seat in the cosmos i mean i tried hard to [1:37] give that description it's about the best thing to come up with did did it ever did you ever get used [1:44] to the images you were seeing outside we never did no we never did you know the earth got smaller and [1:51] the moon got bigger but more importantly the moon would shift in terms of what we could see on it [1:56] and one of the first things that we noticed that we knew we were in for a treat was about the third [2:01] day we had a view of the moon and it looked almost right but it wasn't the moon we had seen our entire [2:06] lives we were starting to see the far side and it just got more and more amazing seeing the earth and [2:12] the moon in the same picture you just realize how vibrant it is and what an oasis it is and then honestly [2:19] missing the moon as we left these beautiful these beautiful views as happy as we were to be [2:24] returning home there was a part of us that was left there i would say because of what we got to see [2:29] i just want to play the video when you returned there's this great video it's released later so [2:33] maybe a lot of people didn't see navy divers opening up the hatch you can just feel the excitement [2:39] their excitement your excitement um some of the the astronauts we had on we're talking about [2:45] sometimes when they had returned from space and the doors opened some of the like the crew [2:48] who first opened the door were like oh it's kind of a little ripe smell how did it smell in there [2:55] well you have to ask them but i imagine after 10 days without a shower uh we were a lot more excited [3:00] than they were it was one of the first questions we asked them they said they say that to everyone i [3:05] think there's no way it did michael collins during the apollo 11 mission second person ever to orbit the [3:12] moon alone wrote about the experience he said i am alone now truly alone and absolutely isolated [3:17] from any known life i am it obviously you were all together but can you just talk a little bit [3:23] about the moment you lose communications with with mission control you lose sight of earth [3:29] and you're taking in this part of the moon that as you said many have never seen before yeah you [3:35] know it uh actually you just we all read carrying the fire by michael collins before the mission and [3:40] it just puts that into perspective after being there and having the four of them at that moment [3:46] when we lose communication with the earth after that earth set we were out of communication and i [3:51] was very glad to have three of my closest friends up there with me so what michael collins went through [3:56] is even i i just understand it at a deeper level now but it also was a very busy time this is when we [4:03] would get closest to the moon and not long after that farthest from the earth and so this is when we made [4:08] some of our best observations of of what we were seeing up close and so we took a minute to observe [4:13] but then we went right back to work um reed i just want to play the the beautiful moment that your [4:19] colleagues uh honored your late wife carol during the mission um let's just play that this is gonna be [4:25] hard to read loved one it is such a beautiful moment um in a world where a lot of people don't talk [5:07] about loss and don't talk about grief it's so meaningful to have you all doing that and in this moment [5:14] where the whole world is watching and i just thought it was really incredible i will tell [5:18] you anderson it forged the crew like that moment really did forge us together in a way i don't [5:23] think anything else really could have it was a very special moment yeah um i want to play something [5:28] you said uh christina after radio communication was re-established after the spacecraft uh emerged [5:33] we will explore we will build we will stop we will all choose her well did you you didn't just come [6:01] up with that i did did you really thanks to this guy uh he asked me to say the words when we came back [6:08] what we call aos acquisition of signal and we had talked about when in the mission we were going to [6:14] commemorate milestones that wasn't the one i was assigned so i was not ready and um i panic wrote it [6:20] in my head as i was observing craters the ones how long did how long did you have to to write that [6:26] about 10 minutes wow and i scribbled it on my kneeboard my computer broke in space so i carried [6:32] around a paper kneeboard on my leg the entire time and i scribbled it down and i still remember you [6:37] giving that that right there and i was floating kind of behind the displays up above you and you [6:41] were down on seat two still looking out the window and you were watching when we had acquisition [6:45] a signal and i could sense that i was terrified yes it was and then as you started going and you [6:52] were just listing off these things we were going to do and then we will always shoot each other i was [6:56] just i it was just numb well one i'd like to apologize to the science teams because my observations [7:02] of the moon in that little space of time might have been a little compromised but i i sat deeply with [7:08] it for a minute and you know i think this is a personal thing what drives us to explore space [7:14] and for some it is this idea of colonization reaching out and that has never struck me [7:21] for me the reason to explore is to bring back an appreciation of what we have and to treasure [7:27] this lifeboat that we all share and i wanted to make sure somehow to convey that in the moment that [7:33] we were able to see everything we've ever known again for the first time yeah it well you knocked it [7:38] out of the park um out of the universe really jeremy you're the first crew to experience returning [7:44] to earth at correct me if i'm wrong nearly 25 000 miles per hour so what does it it doesn't [7:54] do you have a sense of how fast you are going you do and as you approach earth before it you can [8:01] actually perceive the speed of the vehicle increasing because earth is pulling you back [8:06] it is accelerating you and by the time we hit the atmosphere we're doing 39 times the speed of sound [8:10] and you're seeing it here and then you see this fireball forming around you at the windows and [8:15] do you know how fast is that per minute i mean do you do yeah per second six miles per second [8:24] get out of here six miles per second yeah wow every astronaut i've met is just extraordinary i mean [8:33] generally i mean i'm not just like sucking up to you all every astronaut it just has such interesting [8:38] backgrounds and such like diversity of life experiences that they bring to it and the fact [8:45] that there is this government agency and that you do these things it's just incredible like it's [8:50] really impressive i mean i there's no question here i'm just it's the honor and privilege of a lifetime [8:57] it's also the responsibility of a lifetime and sometimes i think that in a way the best ambassadors [9:03] of humanity are the ones who experienced it broadly so we've all tried to pick up as many human [9:09] experiences along the way and carry them forward as we can you know can i add a facet to this though [9:16] you know people read the resumes and sometimes pull off those accomplishments and think you're this [9:19] walking string of successes the thing about the folks in the national i know a guy who keeps a journal [9:24] of everything he has messed up that takes that that's an insane amount of self-awareness and so i [9:31] would say they're incredibly hard working but it is also one of the best teams i've ever been on [9:36] i've been in the military almost 30 years and the astronaut office is just a unique but very diverse [9:41] group of people that makes mistakes but we also have a ton of grace and mercy in the office and we [9:46] we take care of each other and and we help each other get better i love the idea of an astronaut office [9:51] like you're all walking around cubicles desks if you'll let me just take a second here we also have to [9:59] honor uh the team that had the courage to push the button and send us off the planet because [10:06] they've the safe thing for them to do the responsible thing for them to do would have been [10:11] to not launch four human beings who have families who have loved ones and not send us a quarter million [10:17] miles away but they had the courage and the trust in the machine that they built to launch us and we we've [10:21] gotten to see a few of our friends this week and it's like that i think when you ask how are we processing [10:26] this post flight so far it's starting to dawn on me that we we connected with the world we had a lot [10:31] of we had a lot of fun we had a lot of responsibility on our shoulders but these people had us on their [10:38] shoulders and they carried a heavy burden while we were up there and we just have the deepest respect [10:42] for that team yeah well i i feel like we needed this as a country as a as a human race and i'm just so [10:50] honored to to meet you all and thank you really appreciate it thank you thank you and we all have a [10:55] responsibility to keep it going yeah amen thank you