00:01NASA's four Artemis II astronauts are homeward-bound after successfully completing a lunar flyby
00:06that saw them travel deeper into space than any other humans.
00:13Houston's mission control regained communication with the crew after an expected loss of contact
00:18for some 40 minutes, as their spacecraft passed behind the far side of the moon.
00:23As they began their return towards Earth, U.S. President Donald Trump called and congratulated
00:28them, calling them modern-day pioneers who made history.
00:31We were just at complete peace and just doing our job and just trying to do a good job to
00:37collect as much science data as we could while we were on the far side of the moon, and we
00:41were just giddy in here, like, of our lives.
00:45He's being a bit humble, but as soon as we went out of calm with planet Earth, we did have
00:50maple cookies.
00:51As we just gathered together for about 30 seconds, each one of us had a maple cream cookie and
00:56then right back into the science.
00:58But we had to take a moment to honor that time going behind the moon and out of touch
01:05with Earth, and that was a very surreal moment for this crew.
01:09Astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen spent hours sending
01:14back detailed observations of the moon as they passed around it.
01:17They also observed a total solar eclipse after completing the flyby.
01:21Their mission sets the stage for a moon landing by two astronauts near the moon's south pole
01:26on Artemis 4 in 2028.
Comments