ICYMI, we’re going back to the moon. And just days ago, NASA named the four astronauts for the incredibly important Artemis II mission: Christina Hammock Koch, Reid Wiseman, and Victor Glover, as well as the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen.
With a launch set for approximately November 2024 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the four astronauts will board NASA’s gargantuan deep space rocket, the Space Launch System, and will be the first to test the Orion passenger spacecraft. They’ll fly about 6,400 miles beyond the moon (about 230,000 miles from Earth), then loop back and head home to Earth.
Koch, Wiseman, Glover, and Hansen joined Stephen Colbert on The Late Show on Wednesday, speaking about the historic mission, their top speeds in space, (and mainly giving Hansen crap for being the only Canadian crew member).
But they also dug into what they expect to experience when the Orion spacecraft brings them back to Earth after their moon loop. NASA successfully tested this maneuver in December, with a “skip entry” into the atmosphere and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Though the landing was successful, NASA revealed vital hardware problems in March, including damage to the SLS’ mobile launcher and the Orion’s protective heat shield. Yes, these will need to be solved before there’s humans in there.
But back to the fun stuff.
When the Artemis II crew re-enter the atmosphere, they’ll be travelling around seven miles a second, Glover, the mission’s pilot, explained on The Late Show. Adding to this, the mission’s commander, Wiseman, explained the crew will be lying down for the re-entry, experiencing g forces of anywhere between eight to 10 at most (that’s a lot). NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told reporters in August. “It’s going to hit the Earth’s atmosphere at 32 times the speed of sound.”
“Really, the only thing you feel is it’s very hard to breathe and your eyes kind of flatten down. So tears start coming out the back of your eyes a little bit,” said Wiseman.
“So it’s perfectly fine if you don’t want to breathe or have eyeballs,” quipped Colbert. “Other than that, it’s just perfectly fine.”
“You won’t be passed out for any of it though,” assured Koch.
Mashable’s done a lot of epic reporting on the Artemis II mission. Check it out in our space coverage.
