Traveling at 39 times the speed of sound, the Orion spacecraft carrying NASA’s Artemis II crew became what mission commander Reid Wiseman called “a literal ball of plasma” upon reentry, with flames visible through every window and the fuselage warm to the touch during the crew’s appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
Astronauts Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, the first Canadian to fly to the moon, spent ten days in the compact Orion capsule aboard NASA’s Artemis II spacecraft before landing back on Earth after ten days. While everyone talks about the excitement of the launch, the astronauts all agreed that the landing was the real challenge.
“You’re going six miles a second,” Wiseman told the crowd, “and you don’t really feel that speed until you hit the atmosphere.” Hansen, who shared his first spaceflight experience, said a “containment plan” was drawn up in advance; if he struggled, he didn’t need it.
When asked, the astronauts from the dark side of the moon said that on the third day they started calling their planet “Tiny Earth”, a joke about the size of the Earth that could be observed from the Orion window even at the distances of the moon.
The far side of the moon was spotted early in the mission, with the crew observing the unusual geometry of the moon’s surface from afar before coming to the far side. Hansen described the excitement that occurred as the crew members crowded around the window: “We see something that no one has seen.”
They said the most emotional events for the crew occurred when they unanimously decided to name a lunar crater in memory of Wiseman’s wife, Carol.
Wiseman also told Fallon that his two daughters, who watched from Mission Control, had no prior knowledge of the gesture. “That strengthened us as a crew,” Wiseman said. “We are forever connected.”
The Orion capsule, which the crew compared at best to the space of two minivans, housed all four for the entire duration of the mission. Three years of training together meant few surprises, although Koch emerged as the recognized night owl, while Glover was quietly voted the best dancer in the booth. “We gave each other a lot of grace,” Koch said.
