What do astronauts near the moon do when it’s time to talk to their colleagues orbiting the Earth on a livestream?
It’s hard to translate into metaphors just how far the crews were from each other. But looking at the Artemis 2 and Earth distance alone, it was the equivalent distance of sailing between Boston and the Panama Canal, a mind-blowing 92 times, based on distances provided by NOAA. That’s roughly 232,141 miles (373,595 km) apart, according to the crew during the livestream.
But even from so far away, the crews shared companionship.
“It’s fun to be up in space with you at the same time,” said the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen, who waited 17 years for his spaceflight (or should we say, moonflight?) aboard Artemis 2.
“We know how fortunate all of us are as humans, to come up here and look down at the Earth from above,” answered NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, on her second long-term ISS stay as a part of Expedition 74. “We really wanted to hear what that felt like — how different that felt — now from your new perspective around the moon.”
Next at the mic, moonside, was NASA’s Christina Koch, who performed the first, second and third all-woman spacewalks with Meir at the ISS in 2019, during Expedition 61. “We do miss the ISS,” said Koch, speaking also on behalf of Artemis 2’s Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover, who flew to the orbiting complex on separate NASA missions in 2014 and 2020-21, respectively.
“The views there [at the ISS] are awesome. Being able to see specific places, being able to see your home, specifically … I miss them every day, almost,” Koch continued. “The thing that changed for me, looking back at Earth, was that I found myself noticing not only the beauty of the Earth, but how much blackness there was around it — and how it just made it even more special.
“It truly emphasized how alike we are,” she said, “how the same thing keeps every single person on planet Earth alive. We evolved on the same planet. We have some shared things about how we love and live that are just universal, and the specialness and preciousness of that really is emphasized when you notice how much else there is around it.”
To a follow-up about how ISS experience comes in useful at the moon, Koch first shared that she had “sat console” at NASA’s mission control in March, while Meir and Christopher Williams were getting ready to do a solar array prep spacewalk on March 18. (Artemis 2’s astronauts had completed their training at this point, and the crew was awaiting their delayed mission liftoff on April 1, which is presumably how Koch found the time.)
“I was just filled with pride,” Koch said of watching the suit-up, as Meir and Williams exchanged a high-five on camera. “But it also really re-instilled in me those flight operations principles that we live by, in a real-time, high-dynamic and risky environment. So having that kind of impression in my mind right before this [Artemis 2] flight was huge, and basically, every single thing that we learned on ISS is up here. And then, of course, there’s the funny and practical: how to eat, how to do silly things with water, how to flip around. We’re bringing that with us, too.”
With Koch’s comments finished, Wiseman quickly grabbed the mic to speak with Williams. “I’ve just got to add, C, that just before you launched, you said you can’t wait to talk to us on the space-to-ground [loop]. And it is happening, brother. I cannot believe it.”
“Face to face, we said,” Meir responded, referring to the video between the astronauts, before she handed the mic to Williams.
“Yeah, I can’t believe it,” Williams said. “I mean, I remember having coffee and sitting with you guys just before I walked [did crew walkout] to fly up here, and it’s just so awesome being able to talk to you right now. It’s such a special opportunity.”
Glover, next at the mic, said one of his most interesting insights in moving to the moon from ISS was not having an extra module to “deconflict” activities, which means “everything we do, essentially, starts with a spatial conflict and we have to take the time to work it out in every activity. And so we’ve been just having fun working through that.”
Hansen added that as the rookie, he is having an “awesome experience” on his first flight, even coming through on a dare from Meir to grow a moustache during his training. One of the things that has kept Hansen smiling, he said, was having the record “so far” among the Artemis 2 crew for keeping the potable water dispenser open a little too long. Hansen noted, however, that he wasn’t the only one with these failures — although he didn’t name names.
Wiseman, next up, said that Hansen’s new eyes to space led to another fun moment among the crew. Due to orbital mechanics reasons, the crucial translunar injection burn had to happen about when the crew was a dizzying 115 miles (185 km) above Earth, less than half the altitude of the orbiting ISS.
And to get there, the crew was coming down in a steep, but planned, orbit that had taken them to roughly 46,000 miles (74,000 km) above the Earth, double that of a typical geostationary satellite. As such, Wiseman recalled “looking at the entire Earth just growing rapidly in the window,” and Hansen’s reaction.
“Jeremy turns around at us and goes, ‘I’m not sure. I think we’re going to run right into it,” The comment was meant as a joke and got the entire crew laughing, Wiseman said, but he said watching Earth “grow” so swiftly was fascinating. “It is crazy up here, and it does bang your mind.”
With the call drawing to a close, the astronauts exchanged their menus. The Artemis 2 crew had items such as sweet and sour chicken, Kona coffee with cream, butternut squash and spicy green beans. Members of the ISS crew also had spicy green beans — heat is a popular food item in space as taste sensations fade in microgravity — along with mango salad.
Then came the farewells.
“Jessica, I always hoped we would be in space again together, but I never thought it would be like this. Congratulations to you on being [ISS] commander, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your trip out in space,” Koch said.
“Totally share all the same sentiments,” Meir responded. “I’m so happy that we are back in space together, even if we are, you know, a few miles apart.”
She added that the ISS crew jokingly ran to the far side of the space station as the Artemis 2 crew achieved their record-setting furthest flight distance from Earth at 252,756 miles (406,771 km), beating the mark set by Apollo 13 in 1970. The ISS crew did that to say “we could claim you were the furthest away from you in that moment,” Meir joked.
“We were doing the same shenanigans here when we got to the furthest point for the moon; I tried to get to the furthest point in the spacecraft, and my crewmates were clawing me down,” Wiseman answered.” He clarified it was a joke, as the crew was busy doing science, but he said it was good to hear the same conversation was taking place at the ISS. “It was a lot of fun.”
Other members of the ISS on the call were NASA’s Jack Hathaway and the European Space Agency’s Sophie Adenot. Not present on the call were NASA’s Anil Menon and the Russian Roscosmos Andrey Fedyaev and Pyotr Dubrov.