NASA’s Artemis 2 Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the Orion spacecraft atop it reached the Launch Pad 39B at 6:42 p.m. ET on Saturday, Jan. 17.
NASA’s technicians and engineers will prepare the Artemis 2 rocket for its wet dress rehearsal, now planned no earlier than Feb. 2.
A wet dress rehearsal is the testing of fueling operations and countdown procedures. The test involves the fueling of “cryogenic, or super-cold, propellants” that “run through the countdown, and practice safely draining the propellants from the rocket.”
NASA said in update that “additional wet dress rehearsals may be required to ensure the vehicle is completely checked out and ready for flight. If needed, NASA may rollback SLS and Orion to the Vehicle Assembly Building for additional work ahead of launch after the wet dress rehearsal.” If NASA needs to rollback the rocket to the Vehicle Assembly Building this could delay the currently scheduled Feb. 6 launch to another day and possibly to March. However, NASA has four additional launch windows in February, the 7th, 8th, 10th and 11th.
The uncrewed Artemis 1 mission that flew the Orion spacecraft around the Moon in 2022 had numerous issues during its own wet dress rehearsals which NASA subsequently addressed.
In a media briefing on January 16, Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, Artemis launch director, said as a result several modifications have been put in place ahead of Artemis 2. Changes to how engineers load hydrogen, modifications to some of the hardware, and adjustment of flow temperatures are some of the differences she listed. She emphasized, however, that rockets can be rockets. Nothing is routine, as “you can have hardware that fails at any time.”
During the rollout on Sat. January 17, NASA held a media briefing with NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and the Artemis 2 crew of NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Canada’s Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. SpaceQ was in attendance and you can read our story “Seamless” collaboration: NASA and Hansen laud joint efforts as Artemis 2 Moon rocket rolls out here. Below is the media briefing video and complete transcript of the event.
NASA’s Artemis 2 Crew Rollout Media Event
Transcript
This transcript has been edited-for-clarity.
Bethany Stevens (Public Affairs Officer): What you’re seeing is a live view of NASA’s Artemis 2 rocket. We are slowly but surely rolling out to the launch pad. Good morning, and thank you for coming out here today to witness this monumental step ahead of our return to the Moon. It is the crew: NASA astronauts Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and CSA astronaut Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen, as well as NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. With that, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman.
Jared Isaacman (NASA Administrator): Thank you. Welcome. Good morning everyone. Thank you for coming out to witness this historic moment. Before I turn it over to the real stars of the show here, the Artemis 2 crew, I thought I’d take a moment to just share a little bit about the journey that we’re on right now, and President Trump’s vision for American leadership in space.
Now, this all began just about nine years ago. President Trump established the Artemis program, committed America to returning to the Moon. Now, none of this should be a surprise. This is a president who created the Space Force. This is also the president that oversaw, during the last year of his term, the return of American spaceflight capability here to Kennedy Space Center after nearly ten years from when the Shuttle was retired.
Now, I can tell you, we’re off to a little bit of a slow start here. We’ve got about 12 hours to go approximately before the Artemis 2 vehicle will make its way over to Launch Pad 39B. From there, things will start to pick up the pace a little bit. We’ll have technicians put it through its motions. We’ll ultimately get to wet dress. And then from there, this vehicle, along with about 8.8 million pounds of thrust, is going to accelerate the Artemis 2 crew here to near-Earth escape velocity. Just under 25,000 mph—farther into space than we’ve ever sent humans before. Around the Moon, and back here safely to Earth.
Now, this is the start of a very long journey. We ended our last human exploration of the Moon on Apollo 17, the 17th mission. I hope someday my kids are going to be watching, maybe decades into the future, the Artemis 100 mission. We’re talking about a lot of repeated missions. Humans and crew members and cargo going to and from the lunar environment.
The architecture you see behind us here with SLS and the Orion spacecraft is just the beginning. Over time, launching missions like this, we are going to learn a lot and the vehicle architecture will change. And as it changes, we should be able to undertake repeatable, affordable missions to and from the Moon. And in that same vein, this is the mission. Just as we begin, the cost to undertake a mission like we’re going to undertake with Artemis 2 is not inexpensive, but where it will go as we learn and gradually incorporate reusability is what’s going to enable missions like Artemis 100 and beyond.
And why are we doing this? We are doing this to fulfill a promise. A promise to the American people that we will return to the Moon. A promise to all of the pioneers, the engineers, the scientists, the astronauts, the researchers from the 1960s who laid the foundation that we are standing upon right now. We’ll do it inevitably to figure out the orbital and lunar economy for all of the science and discovery possibilities that are out there. To inspire my kids, your kids, kids all around the world to want to grow up and contribute to this unbelievable endeavor that we’re on right now.
And before I hand it over to Commander Wiseman on this, I just want to acknowledge the contributions from literally the army that we have at NASA that shows up to work every single day to try and change the world. We don’t do it alone. We have commercial partners. We have international partners that are involved in this. But we have thousands of people that have brought us to this moment. The thousands of people that have been working here 24/7 preparing us for this rollout. The thousands of people across the country that trained and prepared this crew to undertake this mission. The controllers that will look out for them in space. The recovery crews that will bring them safely home to their family at the conclusion of their ten-day journey.
So with that, ladies and gentlemen, this is your NASA commander.
Reid Wiseman (Commander): Thanks, Jared. Appreciate that. You said we’re off to a slow start, but I heard Ike is going to go over there after this and drive, so we’ll pick it up. The relative motion looks good, though.
What a great day to be here on behalf of myself, Victor, Christina, Jeremy. Administrator Isaacman, thanks for having us out here. This is a great way to start rollout morning at Kennedy Space Center. I just want to build on what you said about these teams. We see this beautiful hardware behind us, the SLS, the Orion. But for this crew, we’ve been on this journey for about two and a half years. And we truly look at that and see teamwork. We see global cooperation. We see a strong nation leading the way.
You look at those white boosters on the side; we’ve been out in Utah. We’ve met the men and women that are assembling them, that put them on rail cars and sent them down here to the Cape. The core stage in the center built by Boeing; Jeremy and I were there at Michoud, and that thing got loaded on the barge and shipped down here with the RS-25s tested at Stennis, assembled to the bottom of that rocket. The Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage; we met that whole flight control team out in Denver with United Launch Alliance building up into the European Service Module. We were in Bremen, Germany, meeting the Airbus team that assembled that and the European Space Agency. And then up to our Lockheed Orion; we spent so many countless hours in that vehicle preparing.
And then you look just to the left here at Launch Control. It’s almost eclipsed—it is eclipsed—by the VAB. Charlie Blackwell-Thompson leading her team and the Exploration Ground Systems folks, they have hit every single milestone for the last year to get to where we are today. They’ve hit every single one of them. It is awe-inspiring. And then back in Houston with our flight control team led by Jeff Radigan and our launch directors, we really are ready to go. We were in a SIM for about ten hours yesterday, doing our final capstone entry and landing sim. We got in T-38s last night and we flew here to the Cape to be here for this momentous occasion.
With that, I just really want to say thank you to all the press that are out here getting our message out. It’s very important. And I hand it back to Bethany. Thank you.
Bethany Stevens: And with that, we will open the floor to questions. There is a mic over here on the left, and we ask that you limit to one question each so that we can get to as many people in questions as possible.
Marcia Dunn (Associated Press): Hi, Marcia Dunn, Associated Press. For Mr. Isaacman, what’s your take on how realistic it is that Artemis 2 will take off in February? And if I might ask Christina a real quick question: I loved your crescent moon shot recently. What’s it like to go outside at night and look at the moon now?
Jared Isaacman: So I guess I’ll take the first part of the question. We’re continuing on with our Artemis 2 preparation campaign. I think we’ve held schedule pretty well getting to rollout today. So we’ll get out there. We’ll put it through its motions. We’ll get through wet dress. I think zero intention of communicating an actual launch date until we get through wet dress. But look, that’s our first window. And if everything is tracking accordingly—I know the teams are prepared, I know this crew is prepared—we’ll take it.
Christina Koch (Mission Specialist): We like that answer. Going out and looking at the moon at night… I’ll hand this all down the line. I’ll be brief, but I think one of the most magical things for me in this experience is when I looked out a few mornings ago, there was a beautiful crescent in the morning sunrise, and I truly just see the far side. So that was a waning crescent here, so it’s a waxing gibbous on the far side. And you just think about all the landmarks we’ve been studying on that far side and how amazing that will look. And seeing Earthrise, those sorts of things. Just flipping the moon over and seeing it from the other perspective is what I think when I look out right now.
Victor Glover (Pilot): Yeah, thank you for that question. It is definitely different now, but it’s also kind of like asking a kid how they feel about their homework. You know, it’s a part of what we’ve been studying and training for. And I go outside and now I think of it in a very different sense that there’s some scientific value in what we say about what we see. Some months back, when we walked out in the parking lot, Christina and I were standing there and I just had this overwhelming feeling that, wow, what science about the moon does in the future is going to at least be affected a little bit by what we say about that view. And so that has changed how I look at the moon since. My dad asked me when we got assigned, do I see it differently? And I didn’t right away, but I definitely do now because of that great team that we have getting us ready to do science.
Jeremy Hansen (Mission Specialist): I think for me, what I see is the fact that all the people here on Earth, when they look up at the moon during our mission, before our mission, after our mission, during Artemis 3, and missions beyond all the way to Artemis 100, they’ll know that not only have we been there in the past, but we actively go there. We send people there because we’re humans that must explore.
Reid Wiseman: Something I’ll share with you, it was kind of neat. Over the New Year’s time period, I had a little time off, had my kids back at home from university, and we just had the best viewing weather in Houston for the moon, and it was approaching a full moon. And I had the kids out there, some mandatory science, observing the moon with me, teaching them the landmarks that we’ve been memorizing as a crew. But they were lit up about it too, and that was just really fun. I think the moon is something I’ve sort of taken for granted, you know, looked at it my whole life. You just kind of glance at it, glance away. But now I’ve been staring at it a lot more, and I think others are going to join us in staring at the moon a lot more, as there are humans flying around the far side. I think that’s just good for humanity.
Bethany Stevens: And with that, we’ll take the next question.
TJ Mascara (The Epoch Times): Hi. Thank you so much, TJ Mascara with the Epoch Times. This question is for Victor and Jared. Looking ahead to missions like Artemis 100 and just the future of our space activities, a lot of talk seems to be around automation and computer pilots and all that. I was wondering how important it is that we continue to build on manual flying in space and what place will that have going forward?
Victor Glover: You know, it’s interesting. First of all, did you target me because you know I’m a little bit of a Luddite? And I love the receptors or the controls that I can put my hands on if I’m going to fly something. But I think what the last five years has taught me since flying the SpaceX Dragon—the same one that Jared flew—is that the tool needs to be designed for the task. And so I could go on and on about this, but I think it is something that we have to think more about because the state of technology is where it is, and we’re not going to undo all of that. And so finding ways to integrate software and hardware. But the thing that hasn’t changed, as far back as we can read the records, we are still the same stuff.
I’ve been reading these journals that test pilots put together, and the Mercury and Gemini and Apollo astronauts used to go and give these presentations, and I’ve been reading their reports, and they say the same things that we say: that having a window is important. Having the ability to do critical functions is important. And just how we implement that, though, is going to change with the state of technology. So thank you for the question.
Jared Isaacman: Yeah, I think that we’re just talking about an evolution in terms of what are truly the manual inputs. Right? So I would say probably the T-38s you’re flying are maybe some of the last aircraft you’ve touched that actually when you put a control input in, you’re actually directly moving a flight control surface. A lot of the fourth and fifth-generation aircraft that are flown today, it’s all fly-by-wire. So you’re telling the airplane what you’d like to do, and then the computer is interpreting it and saying, “This is what I’ll give you.” And I think you’re going to just naturally see that evolution in spacecraft.
We’re not taking the human out of the loop. There can be some preplanned waypoints as we navigate around the Moon. And then perhaps a human is directly inputting, “This is the actual target location I would like to land at.” For some reason, the computer is taking that manual input and saying, “Now I’ll put you there.” And I think that’s probably the evolution we’re looking at.
But no doubt, look, as we get farther into deep space exploration, the ability to rely on autonomous capabilities within the spacecraft becomes more and more important. And I’d say the Moon is going to be a perfect proving ground for that. We talk about building a Moon base. Now, day one of the Moon base is not going to look like this glass-enclosed dome city that we might imagine someday. That’s certainly what the ideal end state would be. But it’s probably a lot of rovers that are moving around, a lot of autonomous rovers that are experimenting with mining or mineral extraction capabilities to start printing with regolith. So naturally, I think in terms of what we want to achieve in space, you’re going to incorporate more autonomy in our robotic missions. We’re looking at a mission to Venus right now that could have some onboard AI capabilities in it. So this is the way we’re going to go.
But I’ll tell you, if humans are on a spacecraft, they’ll always have a vote. They’ll always have a say in it. How that may look today could be very much like the F-22 versus the T-38 of the past, if that makes sense.
Bethany Stevens: And with that, we will take the next question.
Ken Kramer (Space UpClose): Hi. Thanks for doing this. I’m Ken Kramer, Space UpClose. Good luck and best wishes to crew. I’m a pharmaceutical researcher, so I want to ask you about the science you’re going to be doing. Tell us a little bit, one or all of you, how it’s going to benefit Earth, and also how it’s going to benefit us getting to Mars. Thank you.
Christina Koch: I think that that’s a great question. One of the reasons that these missions are so important is the discovery and the knowledge that we bring back to Earth, and that is the entire point. We have both lunar geology science, and we have human research on this mission. Human research is that we’re participating in everything from how we can top perform behavioral health, immune response in space—which is a fascinating physiological response that humans have to microgravity. And there’s a really neat new type of technology. We’re flying an experiment called Avatar, where we’re actually using organ-on-a-chip technology, cell-on-a-chip technology to mimic how our cells, bone marrow cells, will respond to microgravity in the radiation environment. To bring that science back to Earth, to understand how we can more efficiently send humans deeper into space and how we respond. So it’s really exciting. We’re happy to be a part of all that science.
And talking about the lunar geology aspects a little bit, the moon is like a witness plate for everything that’s actually happened to Earth, but has since been erased by our weathering processes and our tectonic processes and our other geologic processes. We can actually learn more about solar system formation, more about how planets form maybe around other stars, more about the likelihood of life out there, starting with studying the moon. And I think that question is, in my opinion, one of the biggest philosophical questions of our time. And I think some of the first steps to answering it start with this mission.
Bethany Stevens: With that, we’ll take the next question.
Jeff Foust (SpaceNews): Good morning, Jeff [Foust], SpaceNews. Question for the Administrator. As we’re preparing to go around the moon with Artemis 2, I wonder if you can give us some thoughts on your plans for ensuring Artemis 2 can land humans on the moon by 2028? I know you’ve met recently with SpaceX and Blue Origin about speeding up the lunar lander development, but what should we be looking for in the months to come in terms of getting Artemis 2, keeping it on schedule, or at least ensuring a landing by 2028?
Jared Isaacman: Yeah, it’s a really good question. So one, we will just continue to be as transparent as we can as we make progress towards the Artemis 3 mission. The way the public can best follow on and probably measure progress is just observing launch rate. I mean, that is absolutely the key to unlocking the capability that will be necessary to bring our lander to the lunar environment and bring astronauts down to the surface. So I will say I did meet with both Blue Origin and SpaceX on their acceleration plans. These are both very good plans. I would say they both reduce technical risk from where we were before, so that’s good. But in the end, it’s going to come down to launching vehicles very frequently to learn. Learn about prop transfer for sure, but you’re going to need reusability in order to do that. So I’d say if we’re on track, we should be watching an awful lot of New Glenns and Starships launch in the years ahead.
Bethany Stevens: And we’ll take the next question.
Irene Klotz (Aviation Week): Good morning, Irene Klotz with Aviation Week and Space Technology. Sorry for the sun. For Jared: You’ve ridden a couple of rockets, you’ve seen launches and you’ve seen Starship up close and roll out. Could you tell us what you think is special about this rocket? And if your opinion has deepened or enriched in the month that you’ve been Administrator?
Jared Isaacman: Well, I appreciate the question. We need more questions for the crew over here, because they’re the ones about to embark on a pretty extraordinary journey on that vehicle, I would say. I mean, not a whole lot has changed from my perspective, other than getting, I guess, a lot of firsthand accounts of the people and the effort that goes into building a vehicle such as this. And even more of the history that led up to this, even just walking inside the VAB, which I’ve seen—I don’t know how many times from the exterior. And then you go inside… You couldn’t even find the SLS in there if you wanted to. And then that just brings back what it must have been like during the 1960s when you had multiple Apollo vehicles in there, or at a time when you had multiple Shuttles in there.
So I’ve been halfway through a roadshow around the country to every one of our centers meeting the workforce, trying to hear from those that are actually doing the hard work that it takes to pull off a mission such as this. So nothing changed in my mind about the importance of the mission that is NASA, our path to achieving it. But I’ve definitely had an opportunity to meet a lot of the folks that are helping enable it. And it’s just extraordinary. So thank you.
Bethany Stevens: We’ll take the next question now.
Elizabeth Howell (SpaceQ): Yeah. Hi. Elizabeth Howell from SpaceQ in Canada. And this question is for Jeremy. You’ve often talked about how Canada has been taking all of these steps in space for decades alongside our international partners, including NASA here. And you’ve also said, let’s imagine what’s next for Canada. And so in your mind, what’s next for Canada in space once we finish this step? Thank you.
Jeremy Hansen: Thanks, Elizabeth. Yeah, I would just like to echo some of those previous comments, because against the backdrop of that rocket rolling, it represents an extraordinary American workforce right there watching that thing roll out. And like Reid was talking about, we’ve been around and we’ve met them and we appreciate them. And no matter what their future is, that’s a workforce that is trained to do extraordinary things. And they’ll be redirected as we adapt and continue to do extraordinary things.
And that’s the same story in Canada. I’ve really applauded the American space leadership because they carved out space for Canada to hone some of our skills, to develop workforce in specific areas, and to bring that knowledge. And the future for Canada kind of looks like where the international collaboration wants to go. We aren’t leading that collaboration. NASA is leading that collaboration, inviting our participation. We have skill sets, and I know Canada will rise to the challenge, just like they did in Artemis. When we were asked to join Artemis, we started to lean into developing new robotic systems for deep space. Even we’re working on lunar surface stuff now, so we’ll just bring that workforce to bear to meet joint collective objectives. And maybe I’ll just end with I’m actually pretty pumped to see that because, in just a few weeks, you’re going to see four humans fly around the moon. And if we’re doing that now, imagine what we can do next. I’m pretty pumped to see that come to fruition.
Bethany Stevens: We’ll take the next question.
Richard Orlando (Sentinel): Hi. Thanks for taking questions, Richard Orlando, [Orlando] Sentinel. This is for the astronauts—sorry, Administrator. Tuesday is the 96th birthday of Buzz Aldrin, and there are very few men, all men who’ve flown around or to the moon. I think we are down to five, and they’re all over 90. So one, I know many of you have found inspiration talking with them. I know General Stafford was hand in hand during Artemis I. So can you each tell me what the Apollo crew have been able to teach you about what you’re going to face? And also, if you want to wish Happy Birthday to Buzz, feel free. Thanks.
Reid Wiseman: Happy birthday Buzz. I’ll just share my General Stafford story, which was the day we all got assigned to this mission publicly. My phone rang that afternoon. I didn’t have the number saved. It was a Florida number and I was thinking it was a telemarketer. I was on my couch. I was getting ready to take a nap. It had been a long day with the media, and I almost hit the red hang-up button, but I just figured I would answer it. I answered it and it was General Stafford. “Reid! Congratulations! We are so excited for you.” And I think that’s the way the Apollo crew has always been there. They are so fired up that we are headed back to the Moon. They are so fired up that we’re going on to Mars. They just want to see humans as far away from Earth as possible, discovering the unknown, the near impossible, as the Administrator keeps saying for NASA as our charter. So we really love that.
I also want to say we grew up in the Shuttle era, and we grew up in the International Space Station era. Three of us have been up there and Jared’s been in low Earth orbit. He knows what that feels like. So we do feel like this is an Apollo legacy. But for the four of us here, we are standing on the shoulders of the International Space Station and the science, the research, the long-duration exposure they have had and what we have learned up there.
Victor Glover: You know, I mentioned how I’m reading these journal articles from the 60s about Gemini and Apollo and some of the engineering lessons and piloting lessons that they fed into the system, but something that’s also very interesting that you just kind of get between the technical data is the people that they were. And I do find a lot of inspiration in that, just understanding some of what their families were going through, what they were learning or what they didn’t know they were learning. As we look back, we have the benefit of hindsight.
And so I’ve actually been very fortunate to become friends with Rusty Schweickart. And Rusty gave me a bag of wisdom—quotes from different cultures all over the world that I took to the Space Station. And I’m going to take that little bag of wisdom, but also in my heart and mind, the wisdom that we’ve learned from Charlie Duke and General Stafford and Dr. Schmitt on what it meant to them and some of the story that hasn’t even come out yet. You know, we’re still learning things from the Apollo era. And so it’ll be nice to take the baton, run our best race, and then hopefully pass that baton on to the Artemis 100 crew.
Christina Koch: I think what they’ve taught me goes beyond the technical tidbits and things of that nature. And the biggest thing I can talk about is camaraderie. They taught me camaraderie because I’ve had the privilege of interacting with them for actually over 25 years now through a scholarship foundation that they give back to, and then more recently at NASA remembrance events, which are kind of little reunions in a lot of ways for the Apollo astronauts. And seeing the way they interact with each other, seeing the way they tell stories and the way they still love each other and being around each other and what they went through together and how that bonded them, has been really instrumental for me in appreciating every single day with my crew and with the larger teams. And I will never forget seeing Fred Haise at one of these remembrance events, shaking his hand. And before I even said, “Hello sir, great to see you,” he goes, “I heard you’re going to break our record.” And at that moment he brought me into that camaraderie, and I made a promise that I will carry that forward and keep everyone in that spirit of camaraderie and carry it through our mission as well.
Jeremy Hansen: Just inspirational. I was inspired by Apollo as a kid. You know, I think that’s how I ended up here. Saw a picture when I was a kid of a human standing on the moon. Was either Buzz or Neil, but it just changed my perspective on things. I turned my house into a spaceship. I started exploring space in my imagination, and here I am all those years later.
But for our crew, one of the required readings for this mission was “Carrying the Fire” by Michael Collins. And he just does a great job of putting the human perspective in what was accomplished during Apollo. And it was pretty extraordinary. You were talking about an Administrator earlier about what they accomplished during that timeframe. And I think it’s a good reminder for us. I mean, we’re doing extraordinary things now, but we can create even greater things in the future. We should not accept this as status quo. We should always be striving for more.
And something else you wrote recently, Administrator, that I think touched all of us was just the appreciation for, yeah, we want to fly safely in space, but we also have to be willing to take appropriate risk. That’s what this is about. And when we were reading “Carrying the Fire,” this is the part that really got my attention. Michael Collins jumped on a spacewalk from one Gemini spacecraft to the Agena. That’s extraordinary. That is truly extraordinary. And so that was a courageous example. But they also weren’t cavalier. They were taking calculated risks. And I think it’s a great example for us to remind ourselves, hey, we’re going to go out there, we’re going to take some appropriate risk, and we’re going to accomplish some extraordinary things. We’re going to have some failures, some setbacks along the way, and then we’re going to pick ourselves back up and keep going.
Bethany Stevens: We’ll move to the next question.
Kristin Fisher (The Endless Void): Hi. Kristin Fisher with The Endless Void. It’s so great to see all of you on such an exciting day. You four are about to fly farther into space than any humans have ever flown, and with that comes some inherent risk, like you were just talking about, Jeremy. And so my question is, we’ve heard a lot about your training, but how are you training your loved ones? How are you preparing your families in these final weeks as you get ready to leave them behind on Earth?
Reid Wiseman: Trying to train them honestly and openly is the best thing you can do. Getting our… We just had all of our families together about a week and a half ago at the Astronaut Quarantine Facility at the Johnson Space Center. That was one of the cooler moments in all of our training, just sitting around with our families around a conference table. And NASA was briefing them on the mission. Fellow astronaut Randy Bresnik, who is our technical lead, came in and gave them an amazing overview of the mission profile and the Orion spacecraft. And then there are the more personal touchpoints. I went on a walk with my kids. I told them, here’s where the will is, here’s where the trust documents are. And if anything happens to me, here’s what’s going to happen to you. And that is just a part of this life. I actually wish more people in everyday life talk to their families in that way, because you never know what the next day is going to bring.
So it’s just important to be as open and honest as you possibly can. And then the other neat thing that has happened amongst all of us is our kids know each other, spouses know each other, we all text each other. It has developed this foundation that I know, even though it’s a ten-day mission, I just know who everyone is going to lean on to get through this together. While we’re up there on launch day, we’ve got the easiest job. We really have the easiest job. We’ve trained for this. We know exactly what to do and it will be good. It’s our families that we think about the most on launch day.
Victor Glover: You know, it is an interesting part of this journey. We have the entire resources of our agencies helping to get us ready, but we have to take the initiative to get our families ready. And we have a fantastic family support team. But we do have to take some initiative and lean in on that. And so those are tough talks, but you have to have those talks or they can be tough. And having the experience of doing this to get ready for the Space Station gives some neat experience, but also just something to compare and contrast with as well. And so we were having one of those tough conversations, and I mentioned to my family that, hey, if I forgot to close the garage and we’re all in Florida, I’ll close it when I get back—not 168 days later, but 10 or 11 days later.
And so that is an important part. And thank you for bringing that up, because it is something that I think about a lot. And I am also really grateful that we have… I was actually just talking to Jared’s family about when we were here to watch the launch. I was here to support a colleague and their family while they watched their loved one launch. That’s my favorite role in this office. That is my most cherished, honored experience that we get to do with and for each other. And we have some folks that are going to be supporting us. Two of them are here, our backups, Jenni [Gibbons] and Andre [Douglas], and we have escorts that are assigned to each of our families, and I just wanted to give them a shout out. We’ve all got someone, an astronaut, that is going to be with our family members when they’re watching launch, which can be this terrific and terrifying moment all at the same time. And so I’m just really grateful to that team that helps us to get ready.
Christina Koch: I think for us, in addition to all that, it’s two things. First of all, I love talking to my husband. He’s been very inquisitive about the actual technical aspects of the mission. These guys know my husband. So, you know, we’re talking about what are the big milestones, what are the risky parts? When can he sigh a sigh of relief? When does he need to be glued to the TV and talking about some of those technical things? Every once in a while, we just get a question that comes out about the vehicle or how the mission is going to go.
And then the second one is just a little more practical. I really have to make sure he knows that. It’s not like the International Space Station, where we can just make a phone call. So he’s not going to be able to call me and ask where something is in the house. [LAUGHTER] He’s going to have to find it. That’s been a big one for us.
Jeremy Hansen: Pretty similar for my family. Over the holidays, though, we did watch some Artemis I launch video and entry video. Just to kind of point out a few things that can catch you off guard, like when the main engines light, it does look like for a few seconds a rocket is blowing up and then it launches. So letting them know about that. Also the reentry, what they can expect to see and maybe not see and not hear from us. And that’s normal. And there’s just a lot of different stuff there. And so during those times it just be calm and patient and not make any assumptions.
And then the other thing I told them, maybe this is good for all of you, is during the mission. It’s the first time we put humans on this rocket. And so we’ve done a lot of testing of these systems. When we get to space, we will probably see signatures that look a little bit different from testing, maybe not a lot different, but a little different. And then the team is going to do what the team does and they are going to “worst case scenario” everything. And so if you hear any of it, it might sound really bad. It’s probably not that bad. We’re just going through what’s the worst case scenario. What’s the next worst failure. And that’s probably going to be par for the course on a mission for the first time with humans on it.
Victor Glover: Can I take a little license here and just I want to just say something to you all. Thank you for being here and helping us share all of this perspective and time with and gratitude with the world. But you all have a really unique role. And what Jeremy said just reminded me of this. You know, how we talk about this is going to be based on how we think about this, what you believe, and this is a test mission. This is the first time if we aren’t pointing the thing right, exactly at the spacecraft, we’re not going to get that high-definition downlink. And we could go, “Oh, darn.” Or you could say, “This is hard and they’re safe, and they’re going to be back here in a few days.” And so how we talk about those challenges, how you all talk about those challenges is going to affect how the world sees this. And what we’re doing is we’re swinging for the fence, trying to make the impossible possible. And so I would just encourage you to think about that as we all go on this journey together in a few weeks.
Bethany Stevens: And with that, we’ll take one last question.
Will Robinson Smith (Spaceflight Now): Will Robinson Smith with Spaceflight Now. Thank you for the opportunity. You all had the chance to go down to the pad when the ML [Mobile Launcher] was there. You’ve had the chance to get up into the rocket when it was inside the VAB, but pretty soon you’ll have the chance to go back to the pad with your rocket and spacecraft there. I know you are liking to stay focused on the mission and preparation, but can you imagine for the rest of us that don’t have that experience of what that day will be like the first day you get to go out to the pad when your ticket to ride is there. Thank you.
Reid Wiseman: I’m going to start with the simplest human element, which of course it’s going to be amazing and all that. But I want to reflect back a month ago for our Countdown Demonstration Test, we were in the Vehicle Assembly Building. We were in Orion. Everything was fully powered. I was the first one to get in the seat. Ike [Isaacman] gets in to seat two next to me and I was like, “Ike, look! The dim button works on the display.” And he’s like, “No way.” Because in our Sims, that button doesn’t work and we can’t dim the display at all. And I just want you all to remember we are four human beings getting in this magnificent spacecraft, and sometimes the simplest things put a huge smile on our face.
Victor Glover: That human piece… I actually try to keep a lot of that to myself. I think there’s a time and a place for it, you know? And so excitement, for example, is something I get asked about a lot, and I don’t let that out often. I think it can become a distraction. It’s a long story. I won’t share it with you now, but I can tell you this: Having walked out to 39A and saw a Falcon with a Dragon sitting on top of it, there was a, I’d say 300 milliseconds where I thought I’d just be embarrassed if I walked out of this and said, “I’m not doing this. That’s crazy.” But then I stood there in awe that, wow, we’re actually about to go fly that thing. And then when they got to T-minus nine, it was like, “Oh no, we’re going to fly it now.” And so I actually look forward to that even though I am focused. I’m glad you started with that. I am focused, I’m not excited, I’m focused. But I look forward to a moment like that with that beast.
Christina Koch: As astronauts, one of the qualities that we talk about a lot is adaptability. This idea that, yes, you train and prepare for everything, but the most important thing is that you’re ready to take on what you haven’t prepared for. And so one of the things that these 12 years I’ve had in the astronaut corps has trained me to do is to not have expectations. So today is a day I trained myself not to expect. But looking over there, that’s an amazing feeling. I think that on the day when we climb in, I always have heard this adage and it turns out it’s true: Astronauts are the calmest people on launch day, and I think we do that. It feels that way because we’re just so ready to fulfill the mission that we came here to do that we’ve trained to do. We are so ready to just give back that it gives us this intense feeling of calm and readiness. And I hope and try not to expect that I will feel that way.
Jeremy Hansen: When we last time we walked across that pad for the countdown test that Reid was talking about, and you go up the first elevator and you’re on the bottom of the launch pad, and you walk by the bottom of the solids and the four RS-25s… Even in that moment, it wasn’t fueled and it wasn’t creaking and moaning, and it didn’t look super scary. But in that moment, one of the things that I felt was gratitude. And I just see people when I look at that rocket and people have poured their heart and soul into this vehicle, and it’s truly extraordinary. And their 24/7 here across the country, around the world, people are just pouring their hearts and soul into doing this because they’re fired up and inspired by what we can accomplish. And so I know I feel a lot of things on that day, but there will be a fleeting moment, at least, of gratitude.
Bethany Stevens: And we are actually going to take just one last question, and then we will wrap this up.
Sawyer Rosenstein (NASASpaceflight.com): Yes. Thank you. Sorry a little short. [Sawyer] Rosenstein with NASASpaceflight.com. I know one of the key things about this mission is the human factor of things. And I know you each get just a little PPK [Personal Preference Kit] that you can bring with you. Is there something special or sentimental that each of you is bringing with you that you’re kind of proud to say, “I brought this to the moon and bring it back to Earth?”
Reid Wiseman: I have a blank piece of paper and a pencil, and I can’t wait to write some thoughts on that. I don’t know what to expect, and I don’t want to go in with any preconceived notions. So I know exactly where that note card is, and I can’t wait to jot some notes on it.
Victor Glover: My Bible. And an heirloom for each of my daughters and my wife.
Christina Koch: For me, it’s handwritten notes from people that I love. The idea that I can hold in my hands way out there, or in my case in the past on the International Space Station, I can hold in my hand something that they held in their hands and drew on or wrote on, that is really special to me. So I hope to find some in my care package when I get there.
Jeremy Hansen: I have some things that definitely represent the people that put me in this position, but one of the most meaningful things is the four moon pendants that I gifted my wife and three children I guess two years ago now, and they wore them for a while. I collected them back this summer. And they’re on that vehicle right now rolling to the pad.
Bethany Stevens: And with that, we will conclude today. Thank you so much for coming out and for your interest in NASA. And thank you to the Administrator and the crew for taking the time to answer these questions. Just a reminder that we will have a follow-on press conference and media availability with the Acting Deputy Associate Administrator of ESDMD at 10 a.m. at the KSC press site. Thank you.