Artemis II Crew Joyously Back Home in Houston

The four astronauts who flew around the Moon and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean yesterday are now back in Houston. The USS John P. Murtha recovery ship returned to Naval Base San Diego today and the crew flew home to the happy arms of family, friends and colleagues after an historic trip. In emotional remarks, they thanked everyone and shared their initial reactions to all they experienced while conceding it’s too soon to absorb it all.

NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen spent the night aboard the Murtha and visited their Orion capsule “Integrity” in the ship’s well deck after it was brought aboard with its inflatable airbags intact.

This afternoon they flew back to Ellington Field near Johnson Space Center, home to the astronaut corps, and were welcomed with joy by their families, fellow astronauts, colleagues, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, Canadian Space Agency President Lisa Campbell, Rep. Brian Babin, Chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee who represents JSC, and Rep. Michael Cloud from a nearby district who sits on the House Appropriations Committee. As Isaacman pointed out, the American taxpayers are among those NASA wants to thank since “there is a price to pay when it comes to exploring the cosmos,” but there’s also a return in jobs, technologies, and inspiration.

Hugs were the mainstay of the hour-long event, mostly among the four astronauts who were almost giddy with happiness. They are at the end of a mission that began three years ago when they were named as the Artemis II crew and just achieved what no humans have done since December 1972 — fly around the Moon. Their expressions of gratitude to their families and everyone who trained them were genuine.

All four made heartfelt, poignant remarks, but Koch especially struck a chord. While in space, she said she was amazed looking back at Earth not only by the beauty of the planet itself, but the blackness around it.

Today she shared a story of how she’s been asked in the past about how a crew is different from a team and never had a really good answer. But after this flight, she feels she does and it’s not just about people in a space capsule.

“A crew is a group that is in it all the time no matter what, that is stroking together every minute with the same purpose, that is willing to sacrifice silently for each other, that gives grace, that holds accountable.

“A crew has the same cares and the same needs and a crew is inescapably, beautifully, dutifully linked. So when we saw tiny Earth, people asked our crew what impressions we had. And honestly what struck me wasn’t necessarily just Earth, it was all the blackness around it. Earth was just this lifeboat hanging undisturbingly in the universe.

“I may have not learned, I know I have not learned, everything that this journey has yet to teach me, but there’s one new thing I know and that is — Planet Earth, you are a crew.” — Christina Koch