“We have been waiting for this like you can't imagine,” said Artemis II mission commander Reid Wiseman as his crew began the call with astronauts on the ISS
Artemis astronauts. PIC/ AFP
The Artemis astronauts hurtling back home after circling the Moon have been in regular communication with their team on Earth, but on Tuesday, they also spoke with colleagues aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
“We have been waiting for this like you can't imagine,” said Artemis II mission commander Reid Wiseman as his crew began the call with astronauts on the ISS.
“It’s fun to be up in space with you at the same time!” added Canadian astronaut and Artemis II crewmember Jeremy Hansen.
The call came a day after the Artemis crew completed a packed schedule, including breaking a space travel distance record, conducting the first lunar flyby in more than 50 years, and delivering over six hours of detailed observations of the Moon’s surface.
Unsurprisingly, the ISS team had questions.
“We know how fortunate all of us are as humans to come up here and look down at the Earth from above,” said ISS Crew-12 commander Jessica Meir. “Every astronaut who goes to space remarks on that.”
“And we really wanted to hear what that felt like—how different it feels now from your new perspective around the Moon.”
Artemis astronaut Christina Koch—who, along with Meir, was part of the first all-female spacewalk—said viewing Earth from near the Moon, which is roughly 1,000 times farther away than the ISS, was especially striking due to the surrounding “blackness.”
“It truly emphasised how alike we are, how the same thing keeps every single person on planet Earth alive,” she said.
The astronauts also reflected on life in space, noting how their ISS missions—each of the three American Artemis astronauts has previously served on the station—helped prepare them for the historic lunar voyage.
“Basically every single thing that we learned on ISS is up here,” Koch said.
“And then, of course, there are the practical and fun aspects—how to eat, how to do silly things with water, how to move around. We’ve brought all of that with us too.”
Wiseman also shared a light-hearted moment involving Hansen, for whom the lunar mission marked his first time in space.
As they prepared to fire their engines and leave Earth’s orbit, there was a moment when the view of Earth appeared to grow rapidly in the window, Wiseman recalled.
“Jeremy turned to us and said, ‘I’m not sure—I think we’re going to run right into it!’” he added.
“We were all laughing.”
Following their lunar flyby, the Artemis II astronauts are now on their journey back to Earth and are expected to splash down late Friday.
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