Good afternoon,
and welcome to NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
Moments ago, we saw the Artemis II
crew arrive ahead of their historic mission around the moon.
And they have now joined us.
And we'll be taking questions from the media shortly.
Before we get started, we'll go ahead and kick it off
with some opening remarks from the crew. Go ahead.
All right. Thanks, Courtney.
Hey, let's go to the moon.
I think the
nation and the world has been waiting a long time to do this again.
And, on behalf of myself, Victor.
Christina. Jeremy.
We are really pumped to go do this for this entire team.
It has been a lot of work.
It's been a great journey.
It's great to be down here in the in the Florida warm air.
The vehicle looked amazing on the pad on the way in.
Victor and Christina led us here.
It's just been an awesome start to this journey here at Kennedy.
So I'll hand it over to Victor. Thank you.
Hey. Good.
Good afternoon, everybody. It's awesome to be here.
We love coming here about 100 miles away.
We said how much we love flying and do to KSC.
And so, I just want to send a special thank you to our team.
They pulled a lot together to make this possible for us to get to fly
all these jets and stay in quarantine and have all the support.
So, thank you, to all of them.
And looking forward to answering your questions.
We're so happy to be here.
Little anecdote on the way here.
We had an, ATC controller actually
reach out and ask us how the weather was looking for a launch and wish us luck.
So it was really exciting to see how many people are paying attention to this.
Even just being on this team for three years, we're actually short timers.
A lot of people have been working for a long time.
So we're ready to do this and to fulfill our mission
for all of you.
Thanks, Sam.
Well, I want to welcome,
we left, a crazy goodbye from just so many people lined the streets.
It was a warm embrace on our way, leaving home to come here,
and then to arrive here and have all of you
supporting us on the way and just feels really positive.
I got to tell you, I am fired up my family.
It was, It's hard to say goodbye.
We'll see him again tomorrow, but, we're all fired up to go do this, so I see,
nice.
In NASA speak.
I got to go back, which means I just forgot stuff on the first time through.
We want to give a little salute to our back ups over there.
Andre and Jenny.
So give them all a round of applause.
They've been on this.
They've been on this journey every every step of the way with us.
And, it's great to have them in the aircraft with us coming down here.
And they'll be strapping us into the vehicle on its launch day.
And then I didn't forget we wanted to save this for the end,
but we are holding our, our Zero-G indicator
rise, and Christina will make a few comments about this.
Yes. Let's see if I can get this microphone in place.
But we are thrilled to announce
today the winner of the Zero-G Indicator
or Ziggy contest, which was participated in worldwide.
And our buddy here named rise,
was submitted by second grader Lucas Yee from California.
Yeah, Lucas. Thank you. Lucas.
The crew personally
participated in selecting our buddy, our stowaway, to fly with us.
And this little guy rise really resonated with us
because the theme is actually the Earthrise
photo taken on Apollo eight, which is inspirational to all of us.
And it is a mission that sort of mirrors our own,
and we've incorporated it into our mission patch
and also into our ethos and values as a crew.
So welcome aboard Rise.
It was a great first flight with you.
We look forward to the next one.
Thank you.
One last one last cool little note on rise is on the bottom of rise.
There's a little tiny zipper right here.
And the, micro SD card that has everyone's names that they've submitted.
There's still time. I think it closes tonight.
Courtney can make sure, but this is where that SD card will live.
So it will be right here on our Zero-G indicator.
A great little feature of of our little buddy rice.
Thank you.
That's right.
We'll be taking submissions until 5 p.m. tonight.
So you still have time to get your name in if you're interested.
And with that, we'll go ahead and start our Q&A portion of today.
We have a microphone right here.
Please be sure to state your name and media affiliation before you get started.
Go ahead.
Hi. Marcia Dunn, Associated Press right over here.
Here we are.
You know, you've had, there have been two rocket rollouts, three quarantines.
I know it's part of the job, but how tough has it
all these up and downs been over the past couple of months?
Yeah.
You know, I think for the crew,
we focus on training, readiness, safety.
And so, you know, we've we've known that that was a possibility
the entire time, as you stated.
But our families have really, turned to, to, to, to make it possible.
And I think we actually were able to quarantine
all of us with our entire families, or at least it started that way.
And, and so I really just wanted to focus on them and say thank you to them for,
you know, making it, for supporting us through all the different iterations.
But, you know, that's the that's this business.
It'll go when, the engines light at t0 and so that we,
we totally understand that.
And, and, you know, we still have some, some weather updates and some technical
things to get through between now and, and when the launch window opens.
Thanks.
I'm sure.
Hey, everyone. Mark Strassmann, CBS.
Good to see you all again.
Reed, I think I'll toss this one to you, if that's okay.
You know, ever since the four of you were selected
three years ago, you've been focused on this moment.
And, of course,
millions of people have been following along,
and there are millions of people who are now
just realizing this moment is about to happen.
So when you factor in the unpredictability of space
and when you factor in the fact that this is first and foremost a test flight,
what should be the expectations for this mission?
I think I'll start with April 1st through the six.
I the way I kind of think about it in my head is this is the first time
we're loading the crew on with fuel on the pad, so we're ready.
The rocket is ready. We are ready.
NASA is ready.
This vehicle is definitely ready to go.
We went through the flight readiness review.
We are ready to launch,
but we're also humans trying to load millions of pounds of propellant
onto a giant machine and send it to the moon.
So it could very well be that we get on April 1st
and we're behind timeline, and we're just not ready as a team.
And then we'll probably take a 24 hour or a 48 hour pause in my head.
It probably may be a 48 hour pause, regroup, come out on the third,
give it a go again, see how it goes.
And if we get off on the third, great.
If we get off on the sixth, great.
If we got an issue, we got to come back in May or June or whatever.
The vehicle on the team are ready. We are ready for that.
I was just I was talking to Jenny on the way here.
Oh, Jenny's over there. I was talking to Jenny on the way here.
Like a little piece of my brain is always holding on.
That April 1st is not a guarantee.
April 6th is not a guarantee.
We got to go feel this whole thing out. It's good to see you to.
Hello, Jackie.
Got out for the Times of London.
You're about to embark on one of humanity's greatest endeavors.
There's the 250th anniversary jets over here.
You've got the backdrop of everything that Jared announced last week
with stepping up the pathway to the moon and Mars.
I wonder to what extent that kind of weighs on you
as either a burden or a blessing, and how you consider your places in history.
Thank you.
So I'm happy to sit down.
Yeah.
Thank.
We have talked a lot about the exciting changes
that have been announced and how we're approaching, fulfilling
our, our destiny in space and our journey to the moon and on to Mars.
And the one thing the crew all agrees on is that it has been motivating.
It has been inspiring, and it has fired us up.
We have added in extra looks at our training,
because we are already ramping up ideas
for how we're going to get the next crew trained,
and if anything, it just contributes to
something that we've held in our values since day one.
As a crew, we actually have relay batons because in spaceflight,
whether it's a short duration flight like a sprint, a long duration flight
like many of us have been on, we call it a marathon.
We're in a relay race
and we're not successful to the next missions that are successful.
And if nothing else, this just fired us up for that.
All the more hundred.
Hey everybody, great to see you again.
Welcome back.
It's been probably a year and a half since I got to talk to you guys.
I'm James, I'm our local reporter from channel six.
So I was wondering, what does it mean to each of you
to be flying farther away from Earth than any crew before, in
more than 60 years of American spaceflight?
You start there.
Well,
I think, for us, it's definitely not something we focus on.
It's important for us. We look at our objectives.
We're going to test this capsule.
We're going to lay the groundwork for Artemis three and four,
and we're going to try and get back safely and land in the Pacific Ocean.
That's what really matters to us, and that's what we should be focused on.
You know, I love the fact that people highlight that
and communications highlights it.
It is it is a milestone.
If if we do pass it, there's no guarantee we will.
But if we do, we should celebrate the pioneers who came
before us that put us in this position to be breaking a record like that.
And then we should, you know, throw that out
to the next generation to say, hey, let's let's go even further.
Thank you very much. All right. Okay.
Hi, all, Jackie Wattles from CNN.
Thanks for doing this.
So we understand you all got to be part of the flight readiness review.
Was really curious to hear what that experience was like,
what questions you asked and what you took away from it.
And then I also understand you're taking some laptops
or personal devices with you.
Is there anything in particular you'll have loaded onto those devices?
We do have personal computing devices, so we can load stuff on them.
We also got iPhones recently, so I don't think I can actually say
that as a government employee, we have small, highly powerful
computing devices that we will take with us with outstanding cameras.
So we could throw a few things on that.
It's just it is really nice.
We we will get those devices tonight.
Here are our flight devices, and we'll be able to load a few things on there.
I think family photos and more importantly,
all of our detailed schematics that we've gotten from the engineering
support teams are going on to those all of our procedures.
So just getting to look at all that stuff and put it all together
in one place is going to be great for the flight readiness review.
It's a unique thing at NASA where the crew themselves,
we eavesdrop and we're there at the beginning, but we really
the flight readiness review is really led by our chief astronaut
and our Johnson Space Center Center director from the crew perspective.
So Vanessa was there.
It was the I think overall, looking back at the fryer for us,
the thing that caught the attention the most was that
everything that was briefed, we expected we
there was not a single surprise in that entire flight readiness review.
So when you look at something as complicated as the Artemis, name
is to architecture across industry, across government agencies,
it just told me that our leadership is communicating very well.
They're communicating well at the top,
all the way down to the crew level and the training team in between.
And so for me, that was like a confirming cue
that this team is ready to go fly this mission.
Hi, Lauren Grush with Bloomberg.
So great to see you all. And welcome.
You mentioned
that you're prepared for this flight not to take place during this window.
I would love to hear about what it's been like planning your lives
for these past few months, you know, with a moving target of a launch date.
And I hate to fast forward, but is there anything you're looking forward
to, you know, that you haven't been able to do for when you get back?
Sure.
Yeah. I'll take a stab at that.
I think that as astronauts, one of our jobs, yes,
is to be skill trained to train for all the specific things that we have to do.
But it's also there's some kind of bigger picture, almost theoretical trainings
that we do along the way.
One of those menial tasks, which one of those is being able
to be adaptable, and one of them is preparation without expectation.
And that is something we go into this with straight away from the beginning.
There's one thing I'm sure of, though, is every day
that passes is a day closer to launch, and that's something that I keep in mind.
As for things I'm looking forward to afterwards,
just splashdown and being back on Earth, I haven't thought a whole lot past that.
But yes, the To-Do list in the folder of post-flight is growing.
So. Well,
hi! Hi TJ, I'm a square with the Epoch Times.
Thank you so much and welcome to Florida.
I know you guys are adamant about how you fly when you're ready
and there's no guarantee, but in April 1st launch would mean
that you guys would be on your way to the moon at Easter, which just seems
to, you know, parallel Apollo eight even better because they flew a Christmas.
I'm wondering, have you guys thought about that at all?
Especially like considering the fact that, you know, you're
leaving your families back home.
You haven't.
It it it's really it's really good that you highlight.
I was I was looking at my calendar on my way
out of my house this morning, heading over to Arlington.
And I was like, wow, this is this is an interesting time to go fly this mission.
And I do love that you tied it back to Apollo eight.
And each one of us, we have our own different, opinions,
our own individual opinions, and our own individual beliefs.
And I think that's one of the best parts about this mission right now is we
we have said from the beginning, we really are going for all by all, and we are.
And we want to take the whole world along with us.
And so we just came out of a very important Muslim holiday.
We're going into a very important, Christian holiday.
And I think that that's great
that we celebrate all of this all the way around the world.
And that's really I think that's what this this crew wants to do.
Thank you.
Hi, Will Robinson Smith with Spaceflight Now.
It's good to see you all again.
Question for Victor, if I may, the last time we spoke
in September at JSC, you mentioned, the importance of the team
being able to ask for simulations, go in, in sandbox, kind of work things out.
What was the last simulation that you all did at Johnson before heading out here?
And do you have anything planned between now and launch, or is it
kind of just focus up time for,
you know, actually, what we just,
did in front of you was the last simulation.
I guess this is a part of how we train for space and for the unknown
and dealing with weather and things.
But, you know, in terms of the Artemis specific simulations,
we actually spent a day where we started off with ascent,
and then we ended with entry.
And so we got to work with
both of those flight control teams and, practice those procedures.
And we dealt with malfunctions.
We did multiple runs of each.
And I'll tell you, you know,
the delays that we've had since we went into quarantine the first time in January,
we have opened up opportunities to, to to just really imprint
some of the learning that we already had done.
But we've
also done things that we had not done since, or had not done up to that point.
And so, we we've made the most of this time.
And I'll tell you, every time we, we get out of a sim, I'm like, man,
there's some things that we do, and we're just like, we are clearly ready to go.
But I'm also impressed by how much learning we still do.
And I will tell you, the ultimate learning is going to be the mission.
And so that's one of the things I'm looking forward
to, is coming back and talking about how much we've learned as we fly
ready?
Yes. Zachary, with the launch pad from Canada.
Welcome to the beautiful Space Coast.
It's a great day here with you guys arriving.
At top, we believe that space is better together.
And I think all of you
embody that, that you're not going back just as America this time Canada is going.
And this is laying a foundation to expand back to the moon.
And on to Mars. As a united humanity.
If one of you could just speak on why
space is so important to explore together and go back, as a united front,
and hopefully that trickles back down to being united here on Earth as well.
Yes. Yeah, yeah.
You just kind of answered the your own question there.
I think you did a wonderful job. So, it
we are going back.
The administrator has been,
hard at work this week talking about ignition and getting us.
He's been talking a lot more than we have, for sure.
So the plans that we have, the plans that this agency is setting forth
and this nation is setting forth, we cannot do this alone long term.
There is no way we are going to take this planet
Earth, humanity and explore the cosmos unless we are doing it,
coalition together, all of us.
It is going to take significant investment.
It's going to take significant
development, new technologies, inventive minds.
Everybody's going to have to come together, and I will.
I will echo what you always say.
If you want to go fast, go alone.
If you want to go far, go together.
Like that's been our motto from the beginning.
And you feel that right now with a sustainable lunar base,
habitat architecture and kind of the test
fly, test develop approach, we have been missing that for a long time.
We are very happy to have that back.
Yeah.
And just to give a shout out,
yes, we're taking a Canadian, but we also have satellites.
You know, some of the cubesats are from
international partners in the European Space Agency.
Worked with Airbus to make that service module.
So it is a team effort. And I'm glad you highlighted that.
There's a lot of countries
that are really cheering us
on physically by contributing hardware for this mission.
Thanks for joining us together, Jeremy.
Thank you for taking Canada.
Growing up in Canada, we didn't envision as students going to the moon.
So thank you.
Have an amazing flight.
I Dick from at Astra magazine, National Space Society,
in the history of U.S human spaceflight,
the first flight of a crewed spacecraft and rockets only occurred a few times.
Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, the shuttle,
commercial crew with Crew Dragon and Starliner.
How do you feel about
making this first flight with Orion and the Space Launch System?
And where do you see it placing you in the advancement of,
our human spaceflight program and an add on question.
Are you looking forward to that new capsule smell when you get into Orion?
Okay.
I think it's one thing
that's common for astronauts is we just crave a challenge.
And it's not just the astronauts, it's the team.
It's the broad team.
And when you're doing a first with a vehicle,
any first, you just get to see people at their best.
You are bringing a team. You're giving them challenges.
You think you've solved it, then you realize you have it,
and then you see them dig in and dig out of that.
Challenge it over and over and over again.
And it's just inspiring.
And so to be part of first and we got a lot of first coming ahead
with all the changes.
This is an exciting time and it is going to truly test our mettle.
And I think for humanity, gosh, how lucky are we into it
to be in a position where we can set this many new first up
in front of us, that we're going to slowly knock down one after the other?
You know, there's something that we often say,
you know, failure is not an option, but I think it is often misunderstood.
It's not that we never fail is that we don't quit when we fail,
we stick at it until we create a solution and find our way through it.
We know there's failures coming, but we know we're going to stick to it.
Good job.
Yeah, that's
that. Hello.
My name is Anthony from exploration.
Welcome to Florida.
Christina, you're about to become the first woman to fly
beyond low-Earth orbit ever.
I wonder I'm curious to know how that waiting on you.
If, beyond being part of the crew.
One more of the crew.
Do you feel that extra responsibility of paving the way for the younger
generations, girls and other women following you for your steps?
Yeah, thank you for that.
For me, that aspect of this flight isn't necessarily about any one person.
It's the thing to celebrate is that we as a world,
actually are living in an era where we know that we have to go for all
and by all, in order to answer humanity's call to explorer.
I recognize that we talk about these superlatives.
We talk about the first.
And that's a great thing because it brings people in
what is state of the art right now in human spaceflight, where are we?
Where are we reaching? Where have we been?
And just like that Vista, I am so grateful to those
that paved the way for me to be here and for all of us to be here.
And it's an honor to potentially inspire the explorers of the future.
But again, the big thing to to celebrate and the big thing about that,
that we should all be talking about is we collectively made the decision
to be here in a place where everyone gets to contribute
equally and work equally hard to achieve their dreams, and then vice.
Hi, I'm Rebecca morrow from BBC news.
Thanks so much for speaking to us today.
I'm a quick question for each of you.
You're going to be spending quite a lot of time in a very cramped space.
Do you have any annoying habits that you're worried
about the others discovering?
I mean, you probably know about them already, but please do
share a question for each of you.
Well, we got to Ellington Field this morning.
I had a lot of energy, and I was making some remarks in
front of everybody and like doing a selfie with all the families and stuff.
And Christina goes, that's normal. That's just how it was.
That's just how I'm a metabolizes stress or something like that.
I was like, all right, we know each other.
We know each other for sure.
What you talk about is real and it is important.
And, and we we have developed over three years
very intentionally talking through everything because you never know,
like clicking a pen cap can annoy somebody over ten days in a small capsule.
So you just we have
we have got a great dialog together and we talk through those sorts of things.
But there are definitely going to be things by day six,
seven, eight, nine that we're like, man, all right, I need a little space.
And I can't get any right now.
But we are a good crew.
Confessions, please come forward.
If anybody has something to you can do for sure.
Yeah, sure.
My initial instinct was to just say pass.
My my second instinct is to say I can't really answer it
because they're the ones who would be annoyed.
So I don't know. I don't, I don't know.
But, you know, an interesting thing about this, like you said,
it is a very important aspect of spending, a lot of time in tight quarters.
There comes a point.
Also, like the joke Christina made about Reid
this morning, that there comes a point where what maybe started off
as a potential annoyance, actually becomes a thing of endearment.
And I think we have reached that point.
We spend so much time together.
We shared a state room on a on a Navy ship.
We camp together.
We you know, we've been in a lot of tight situations.
And so they've actually become things that we
I think at least I can say appreciate about each other.
And so I just wanted to share that aspect of.
I will say am I annoying trait would be question avoidance.
And I'm going to just speak around that.
No, I think it really speaks a lot to how you worded
your question and that that probably is how we're all thinking about it.
What are we worried about?
That we're going to annoy other people?
I don't think any of us are worried that the other people are going to annoy them.
And for that reason, we're going to do just fine.
And for the record, I have plenty.
The one obvious one for me is I haven't lived in space for over
six months like these three have, and so I won't know how to float and fly,
and I'll be a bit clumsy up there.
So I know that's going to be hilarious and annoying at the same time.
Some of that.
The other thing I'll just share is, we do have a toolbox or two
on our toolbox for this.
Is that, you know, we have just really clearly stated
to one another and, and believe it in our hearts that we never have
any intention to annoy the others or not lift the others up.
And so when something comes up, we know that it's not intentional,
and we know that we can also bring it up.
And so I expect the three of them
to just tell me when something comes up that's, that's not cool with them.
And, I'll just fix it. No big deal.
Thank you so much.
Hi, Don Eladio, for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
A question for Jeremy.
Jeremy, what can you say about your going to be making history here?
Being the first non-American to leave low-Earth orbit.
How do you feel?
And what can you tell Canada about your feelings?
I feel a lot of things, for sure.
I feel a great sense of pride, for Canada,
because I have seen the greatness that we have
within the country and the contributions that we are capable of making.
And it's fun to see them.
It's fulfilling to see them appreciated on the world stage.
So a sense of pride in, in Canada, for sure.
And also,
you know, it is time to continue
to evolve our vision as Canadians, you know, what can we continue to do?
What can we do next? And that's really exciting to me.
I love that that,
we have that Canadian can-do spirit that what's going to be the next challenge?
Yes. I'll be the first Canadian to fly in a deep space, but,
we often say in this crew,
the points not being the first, it's making sure you're not the last.
And, And what's what's someone going to do?
What's Jenny going to do?
Next for Canada, for example, the other thing I always want to
highlight and, and emphasize in a moment like this that you,
you must acknowledge the extraordinary U.S.
space leadership that creates an environment where
we can bring that excellence and demands that excellence and,
and so that Americans should rightly be proud that they curate,
collaboration that does this together, because that is an intentional,
not unnecessary, but an intentional choice to do that.
And that's an extraordinary thing that lifts up
the entire world to do what Reid was talking about earlier,
to all bring our gifts and do some just extraordinary stuff.
But it does take a leader.
It does take a vision to go do that.
And we have that going on. How lucky are we?
Thank you.
That was that for me?
Oh, sorry.
Jeremy, did you get taller?
You look.
You look taller, sir.
We're, Yeah, we keep bringing them.
No, I'm trying to keep a low profile here.
I do have a question for Reid, if I may, and I'm going to mispronounce this.
I'm Greg Pollone with Spectrum News 13.
This is where our spectrum stations up in New York.
Right. Okay.
I'm going to mispronounce this.
It's the art. Well, how about I do the acronym for you?
Since we're we're all here, RPI, you're a journey from RPI.
The Polytechnic Institute to commander of Artemis to you
tell us about that journey.
Well, it's been a long time, and we don't have that much time,
but it has been awesome.
I had a great education up there in New York at Rensselaer and,
joined the US Navy,
which is just an amazing place for a young man
to go serve or woman or any American.
It really taught me a tremendous amount just about the world,
about cultures around the world.
A lot of people think
that the military is all about fighting, but it is really all for me.
It was that was my job.
But it was all about learning and getting to go around the world.
I traveled around the world
five times on aircraft carriers and in the Navy,
and just learned a tremendous amount that people are at the core.
They're pretty much all the same.
They want to raise their families and do right.
And, sometimes we have our differences on a, on a large scale.
My, my
time in the Navy was just filled with great friends and a good career.
And then in 2009, I came to NASA.
I flew to the International Space Station in 2014.
It's been a while since I've been up there.
So Jeremy, I think I'm a rookie with you.
And then here we are standing here today on this beautiful Florida
afternoon and about to go right, a rocket to the moon.
It's pretty amazing. Very lucky. Thank you. Good luck. Good luck.
Thank you.
Hi. Good afternoon, Max Evans with Nasaspaceflight.
You know,
I asked the same question to the crew of Polaris Don,
when they launched about a year and a half ago now.
And I figured, given the weight of what could be happening next week,
I figured I'd toss it in your guys way too.
Given given how, given the weight of what could be happening
next week, how do you think this mission is going to affect you both personally
and professionally?
Blessing for the whole crew.
It's a deep question.
Yeah.
That wow, that is a deep question and thanks for posting it.
And it's interesting to have a Polaris Dawn crew member here as well.
It just it underscores some things that are being said all the time.
The golden age of space exploration.
There's so many amazing things happening and we should be proud, all of us.
You know, I guess I am I'm not going to answer your question.
I actually spend a lot of time keeping myself
from thinking beyond the mission on purpose.
When I start to daydream about those things,
just because I really want to focus and give my all to this, this task.
And, you know, a few of you have asked different
types of questions about how do you think of this?
The way to this moment,
all astronauts start a mission with one goal to not mess it up.
And I think that is really the at the core of it.
We have a lot of work to do.
And so but I will share something that is related to what you asked.
I can tell you this.
My first mission,
the dream of going to space because it was my first time, was there.
It was front and center.
Even if I tried to focus past it or beyond it.
This mission is much more about duty and responsibility.
So we can pass the baton off for this campaign.
Called Artemis, with its lofty goals.
And we we live that every day.
And and then and then that's it.
And then we want to back out and disappear while the Artemis
three crew stands in front of this microphone.
And so I personally really look forward to to that period
where I think personally and professionally, it is going to satisfy
all of this risk chasing that I've been doing for 27 years.
That was awesome.
Again, we're going to stop right there. And that was great.
All right, Josh, dinner.
Space.com.
What is your impression of the public's perception of your mission?
And do you think there's any aspect of your flight
that people are underestimating, or maybe not as excited
about as you think that they should be?
That's a great question.
Yeah.
I'll take it. Go.
You guys jump in.
I can say,
okay, I can say that
after three years, that's the first time I've gotten that question.
So I'm going to wing it here.
I think overall,
some of the big picture things are that we are going to be looking back
at an Earth where not every human is on earth that is new, that is different.
We will have crew members and our colleagues
orbiting Earth around the International Space Station,
and we even have event where we get to talk to them, ship to ship,
which I think is a really exciting moment to be a part of, and I hope people
come along for that and recognize the importance of that milestone.
I think another really cool thing
that we're doing is the proximity operations demonstration,
where we actually separate from our upper stage rocket
and then use it as a target to manually fly a space ship.
That is awesome.
I'm really excited about that. And of course, rightfully so.
We keep talking about the destination, the moon.
We are doing some awesome things and getting some of our most important
flight objectives done in that really high Earth orbit
that we take in that first 24 hours in space.
So so that's a huge one.
And I'll say the other thing is our proximity to the moon.
We're going to be somewhere between 4000 and 6000 miles
from the surface of the moon, much farther than most of the Apollo missions.
And there's actually a silver lining and an awesome thing about that,
which is that if it's lighted in the right way,
which we expect it to be, especially for this launch window,
we have the opportunity to see parts of the far side of the moon
with human eyes that have never been seen before,
because we have that pulled back perspective,
and that's a really exciting thing to be a part of.
I think our biggest wishes though, for this, and
I do think that as people come online learning about this mission,
they are feeling because of the questions we get
and the feedback we get is that it's for all of humanity.
We really, truly are going for all.
And by all, I'm picking that up from from the public and I hope that
it is just more and more impressed upon them that this is everyone's mission.
Thank you.
This is Bob La Fuente with Audrey Time.
Vinita. I'm speaking, you know,
as a content creator, they are, first of all, thank you.
You've been here one hour.
Answering questions under the sun is a very hot day, so please hydrate.
Thank you to the NASA team for allowing us to be here.
Christine, as you just mentioned, this,
you are going to see things that no human have witnessed before.
At least with that perspective, now that we know that you will have
computer devices that can take video and pictures,
how are you guys planning to share that content with the whole world?
Because you are inspiring so many.
Thank you.
Well, a couple of things.
Consider it's the first time I go out there with humans, of course.
And so we want to set expectations realistically.
That's not like being on the international Space Station 250 miles away.
The communication system may be really robust, and we may be able
to get a lot of information back, but we might not be able to as well.
And this is one of the test objectives, is to see how our deep space communication
system works, how much bandwidth we have for transmitting high resolution
photos or video.
And so I don't know exactly what you'll see during the mission, but
we will capture it all on the cards and bring it back with us.
And we'll we'll do a great job of sharing that.
We're excited to try our best to take some images, to try and bring you along
on that journey to see the moon, to see some extraordinary aspects of the moon.
But also to see yourselves from the perspective of the moon.
I mean, just imagine that the moon in the foreground
and that Earth in the background, and you're all in that shot.
Yeah.
We're really excited to share that with you
very, very.
I thank you for doing this.
Thank you for doing this kind cry for space up close.
Speaking about talking back to you, Manatee, I'd like to ask you guys,
the Apollo crews did broadcasts in space, try to educate the kids.
What? What are you guys going to do?
Transmitting back on your way to the moon and back to motivate,
educate and excite the kids and everybody else.
Thank you.
I, I think the
we've all kind of hit on the the first thing we have to do
is we got to fly this mission successfully.
There is going to be a tremendous amount of unknowns.
There's going to be things that we didn't expect.
There's going to be com linkage difficulties.
There's going to be all sorts of things.
The first thing we got to do
is we just got to fly this mission and then layered into our schedule.
Our public relations folks at NASA
have developed a very nice portfolio of outreach opportunities.
I think the NASA flagship channel, which I believe is on
YouTube, is going to stream this live 24 over seven.
So if you're having trouble falling asleep one night,
you can just pop that on and watch us for a little while.
Spaceflight can be very slow and it can be very awesome.
But we are going to have a tremendous amount of outreach.
We're trying to hit all the social media sites.
We're trying to hit
all the traditional media sites, and we're trying to stream 24 over seven.
And then the other thing that I think we do is just
we have a pretty gregarious, outgoing crew that really feels
bought into this mission.
And part of this mission
is bringing along the world for for all of us to be in this together.
So, you know, we are going to be involved
and we're going to be out there doing this. Thank you.
Sean.
Hey. Good afternoon.
I'm Brandon from Interstellar Gateway.
This question just can just go out to whoever it jumps out to the most.
As someone who grew up watching space shuttle from right here on the Space Coast
and now being in the position that I'm in, I was wondering,
what's something that inspired you growing up that has kind of thrust you
into the position that you're in now about to launch around the moon?
I hope that we all get a chance to answer.
And I was inspired.
I'll give a space kind of related one.
I was inspired by things that made me feel small the night sky, the vast ocean.
I love sailing with my family, big mountains,
anything that made me ponder the size of the universe.
And then on a more individual level, I was inspired by the leaders of the Civil
Rights movement, by the people that weren't afraid to do what scared them
in the face of a lot of mixed messages on what was the right thing.
But they knew what was right, and they pursued that.
No matter what I think about those people a lot, when I'm in positions of
having to work through fear, having to face things
that are uncomfortable, and those are the people that inspired me growing up.
Thank you for the the question and the opportunity to,
bring my parents into it because it's them, my mother and father.
And I know it's easy to say without my mom.
I wouldn't be here, literally, but also not just from the birth perspective.
Along the way, my mom is the reason that I am alive and made it to adulthood
because I was trying real hard to make that not the case.
And literally a conversation I had with my father while I was in college.
I decided I wanted to join the Navy.
I wanted to be a Navy Seal.
And my dad said, hey, I know some Swat guys.
He was a is a retired police officer.
I know some Swat guys who did that.
But, you know, that just doesn't look like you.
But with a degree from Cal Poly and and some wings on your chest,
you might mess around and become an astronaut one day.
And he said that to me in 1997.
And, so listen to your parents, folks, but,
my parents and I could tell you stories like that about my grandparents as well,
but it's been my parents, inspiration and support
through this whole 49 year journey.
That is the reason I get to to be on this side of this microphone.
Nice to talk.
Yeah.
So, poignant.
Victor, for me, I've told this many times
I saw an image, a human stand on the moon, an encyclopedia as a young child.
But I went one step further.
I wasn't just inspired, but I shared that with other people
like Victor Sambo, with my parents, with, teachers, mentors
and people realized that this was something I was passionate about,
and they used it to push me outside my comfort zone over and over again.
I was also fortunate that I grew up watching the space shuttle program,
and, I watched Canadian astronauts fly.
And so I think these mentors, for me, it wasn't something unachievable.
They were actually seeing Canadians fly in space, the space agency through NASA.
And that was very empowering.
And there's something that I, that I often think about what's really important,
I wasn't inspired because there was an inspiration program.
I was inspired because humans went and did something extremely inspiring.
And yes, we have a whole system that shares this so that it can be
used and leveraged and put out there to inspire our next generation.
But the key is to do what our leadership is trying to do right now, which is like,
let's get out there
and let's make it as inspiring as we can possibly make it for this next generation.
And you know what will happen?
They'll be standing here and ten, 20, 30 years, continuing
to do extraordinary things.
Thank you.
Jeremy.
Jeremy, just now that I was just going to say you just have to go
do things like all of us are inspired by people who went and did new things,
did difficult things, did hard things like get out there and try and go do I
that what my favorite part of Polaris Dawn was when you all hit apogee
and you said that Artemis two is going to go carry this torch further from Earth.
And what an amazing moment right there on a on a private spaceflight
at apogee to make that radio call like that's burned into my head.
He's motivated me. You all have motivated all of us.
And we get the opportunity right now to hold the conquered, motivate the world.
And that is an amazing privilege.
And that is something that we are not going to let go of lightly.
But we're doing it
because we're going out and doing something that is so critically important.
I wanted to wrap up, just really by saying two things.
Maybe I'll go back,
but two things, first, for the media this year, if you just look this way,
there's like this gaggle of unassuming people down here.
But when we look at these people down here,
these are the people that built the rocket, that know the rocket
that are going to launch the rocket that have worked on this day
in and day out.
So we look over here and we see our friends
Tyler and our launch director, and we see Jeremy Kelvin, center directors.
We've got associate administrator, deputy associate administrators over there.
It's like, these are our friends over here that have made this mission.
So I just wanted to highlight them.
And then I really, for the crew, just wanted to
look every one of you in the eye down this row and say thank you,
because what you're doing is every bit as important
as what we're doing and what they're doing.
Sharing the message, motivating the world, finding the truth and reporting on it.
So thank you all. Thanks for giving us your time and we appreciate you.
All right.
That's all the time we have for today.
We have a series of briefings lined up this week as we countdown to launch.
So next up, we'll hear from the crew again this Sunday at 11:30 a.m.
as they join us from crew quarters virtually.
And as always, you can stay up to date on all the latest mission
news and events@nasa.gov.
Thanks to our crew for joining us today, and thank you all for joining us today.
We'll see you on Sunday.