ORLANDO, FLORIDA – As Artemis 2 roared Moonward into the blue Florida sky on April 1, I stood at the edge of the Kennedy Space Center lawn with the best crowd ever: photographers.
We need to appreciate these people more, by the way. These folks work contingent contracts across long hours, usually in uncomfortable positions and with heavy equipment. I’ve been in this business 25 years; a fair number of them have double my experience. They’ve seen scores of launches each, some as far back as Apollo.
So when they got excited, and I mean party-excited, to see Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen and his three NASA crewmates blast off Earth, I knew this was a big deal.
“Yes! Woooooo!” they screamed as near-blinding booster light erupted under the Space Launch System. Roaring and crackling hit our ears, and a large plume of exhaust arced over our heads, far more than I’d ever seen across Space Shuttle, Soyuz, or Starlink launches.
A minute of near-silence fell among the crowd, then someone made the call: “Yes! We’re going to the Moon!” “We’re going to the Moon, yeah!” other photographers screamed.
Everyone waited again for yet another minute, plume still stretching, and then more light erupted from under the rocket. A good light. The crowd clapped, cheered again—it was solid rocket booster separation, right on time. “Go, go, GO, SRB (Solid Rocket Booster) go!” a voice called out.
NASA Watch founder and editor Keith Cowing—a long-time friend and former SpaceRef business partner to SpaceQ founder and editor-in-chief Marc Boucher—has been challenging reporters even more in recent days to embrace the wonder and to share that amazement with audiences—to break out of the technical silos we know how to operate in. To be honest, I couldn’t even let loose during that launch, following the press conference, or even during the late-night drive out, hours and hours later. I was in too much shock that we actually flew after a brief rocket battery issue before launch, which I had thought would ground us for the night—if not for weeks.
A short sleep later, however, I was in the car booting it to MCO (Orlando International Airport) for an early check-in and to write this story at the gate. I was westbound on Florida SR 528, a red sunrise sky behind me and the Moon in darkness floating ahead. Luna was almost perfectly in my vision, allowing me to watch the road as well as our crew’s destination. I finally realized, emotionally, what I had just seen. “WOO!” I screamed to myself in the car. “We’re going to the Moon!”
I come from a technical family (granddad in Royal Canadian Air Force as a radar operator, father by training an aviation mechanical engineer). So as I was sharing with some folks at the Cape this past week, in 1996 — when I saw Apollo 13 (the film) — I was lucky to have family to talk to about this stuff. But pre-Internet, few others. All the way back then, emotion wasn’t something I leaned into, but in middle age I’m trying to.
As Hansen emerged from the quarantine facility for a last wave at crowds, I stood close to his assigned far-left spot with journalist friends, two of us armed with Canadian flags. The red must have caught his eye, because he waved, then waited, then sent a thumbs-up. Seventeen years this quiet man has waited, but I could tell even he was excited.
In my various interviews this week, talking about what’s next for Canada, I felt part of my job was to try to get some quotes out of people whose job is almost nothing but the technical. I’m still learning how to do this, but I got a few nuggets.
- CSA astronaut Josh Kutryk told me he came to the launch primarily as a friend of Jeremy (although of course he had an assigned role repeating program messages to reporters). And in speaking about this Moon mission, the test pilot did slip a quote I’ve been enjoying for days on end: “I’ll say it again, just to point out, a remarkable remarkableness of this situation.” (SpaceQ notes that while all eyes are on Artemis 2 right now, the Canadian community is eager to find out if and when Kutryk is flying to the International Space Station, as long expected. We’re still waiting, too, but hope news will be shared relatively soon.)
- Mathieu Caron, CSA’s director of astronauts, life sciences and space medicine, said CSA is planning outreach to “really capitalize on a historic moment,” adding one of the agency’s objectives is that the mission “brings space exploration to the forefront across from coast to coast.” So that’s something to look forward to. (CSA will be releasing more about its Artemis 2 outreach schedule soon, once they confirm mission timings with NASA.)
- Nathalie Hirsch, CSA’s project manager of operational space medicine, got me excited about all the Canadian snack foods on this mission: Canadian strawberry lavender superseed cereal, shrimp curry with rice, natural wild keta salmon bites, and the inevitable maple cream cookies and maple syrup. I would eat any of that. While she is unsure if the flywheel (just underneath the entrance hatch, which included Canadian participation in development) will fly on Artemis 3 or 4 with all the recent changes, she said her nutrition-and-exercise-focused team is pumped to “identify new technology or new products that will help our astronauts meet the requirements” for deep space missions. “They will be different than the ISS missions,” she said, in terms of available space and exercise time, giving lots of room for learning and experimentation.
- Jacob Bleacher, NASA’s chief exploration scientist, paid tribute to Western University crater scientist Gordon “Oz” Osinski — a long-time training partner for Artemis 2, and the co-lead for the first Artemis lunar landing science team. “Oz brings in all the students and everything; he’s a high-energy guy,” Bleacher said, also paying tribute to Oz’s seemingly perpetual remote field expeditions (often including astronauts in the group). “He’s pumped. He’s ready for this. We love having him on board.”
There’s more excitement to come; while I can’t share all yet, I do hope my next dispatch on this mission will be from CSA headquarters near Montreal in the coming days. Ad lunam (To the Moon).