Artemis 2 NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman who commanded the first moon mission in half a century talks to Space.com about the parallels between the two moon efforts.
The 55th anniversary of Apollo 8's historical orbital mission in 1968.
The 55th anniversary of Apollo 8's historical orbital mission in 1968.
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00:00 And we're speaking around the 55th anniversary of Apollo 8,
00:03 which flew three astronauts around the moon in 1968.
00:07 Artemis 2's flyby is coming close
00:09 to recreating that scenario.
00:11 And so can you talk about the parallels
00:13 between the two missions from your point of view?
00:17 - We see parallel, I wish Victor and Christina
00:19 were in here 'cause they would give you a far better answer.
00:22 We see all those parallels.
00:23 I, let me give you two sides of an answer.
00:26 First, the parallel I most like to draw right now
00:30 is that we are building on the Mercury,
00:34 Gemini, Apollo era for sure.
00:36 But when I look at what we're doing in Artemis,
00:38 it feels to me in Artemis that we are more building
00:41 on the International Space Station and a long-term presence.
00:45 I feel the International Space Station in everything we do.
00:48 I feel the international community.
00:49 I feel the way we do export control,
00:51 the way we farm out hardware to different experts
00:54 around the world.
00:55 And then we pull all of this together.
00:56 We have an international crew.
00:58 We don't really have that like before this decade is out,
01:01 we are going to do this.
01:02 We don't feel that space race necessarily as the crew,
01:05 but we do feel a really robust international team.
01:09 Everywhere we go,
01:09 we try to highlight the Artemis Accords.
01:11 I think we're up to 32 nations, maybe even 33 now.
01:14 So I just feel like this to me feels like it's built
01:17 on the International Space Station legacy
01:19 of a little slower, methodical,
01:22 we're here for the long-term.
01:24 However, the day we got announced when you were here,
01:28 April 3rd, sitting on my calculator that day,
01:30 completely exhausted, my cell phone rings.
01:32 It's an unknown number.
01:33 I thought it was a telemarketer
01:34 and I picked it up all annoyed.
01:35 It was Tom Stafford, you know, who flew Apollo 10,
01:38 not eight, but 10.
01:39 And he was so excited that we were heading back to the moon.
01:42 And just to know that we are going to go out
01:45 and try to wrap Apollo 7, 8,
01:49 and a little bit of like 10 into one mission,
01:53 it's just, you know, Victor walks around
01:56 and says the moon is the mission.
01:57 And he's right.
01:58 Like we have got to get used to flying out into deep space.
02:00 We've got to get out of low Earth orbit,
02:02 start making it comfortable to go out to the moon.
02:04 And that's what Artemis 2 is going to go do.
02:06 And then Artemis 3 will do more
02:08 than we could ever even dream of.
02:09 So I love the parallels.
02:11 I think Apollo 8, once we did Apollo 8,
02:14 I think everybody in the United States knew we can land now.
02:17 Like that was, that mission meant so much to just go
02:20 and go and the systems work, holy smokes,
02:23 we can fly around the moon.
02:24 We can read from the book at Genesis on Christmas Eve
02:27 on the back, far side of the moon, you know,
02:28 it's just all that stuff is just amazing to me.
02:30 So we do think about that legacy a lot.