The four crew members of the Artemis 2 mission have offered a historic press conference from space this morning, Spanish time, in which they have explained how the first 30 hours have passed. In their responses, the astronauts, floating somewhat crowded in a corner of the ship, have alternated technical explanations with other personal ones about what they are experiencing, starting with the moment of takeoff. “It was incredible,” said Reid Wiseman, the 50-year-old mission commander. “You try to remain professional while the child inside you wants to scream with excitement.”
Journalists have asked them about the most talked-about incident since the Orion spacecraft took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, whose repair Christina Koch, 47-year-old astronaut, engineer and physicist, and the woman who has been the furthest from Earth, has been in charge of. “I’m the space plumber. I’m proud to be called that. I like to say that [el retrete] “It’s probably the most important piece of equipment on board,” Koch responded humorously as his colleagues nodded. “We all breathed a sigh of relief when we saw it working again. It was just a small problem, I think because it had not been used for a long time. We thought there might be something jamming the engine, but fortunately everything is going perfectly.”
The astronauts, who spoke after carrying out the so-called translunar injection maneuver that officially put them on their way to the Earth satellite, have said that, although everything is going well, there are some things that require improvements, such as the temperature in the spacecraft, and that they are working with , in Houston, to fine-tune it. “It’s quite cold. Just before we connected to this press conference I took off my wool hat and I can’t wait to put it back on,” said Victor Glover, 49, who has a shaved head. “Houston has been working with us to adjust the speed of the fans and the temperature, and we have managed to warm up the ship quite a bit in the last half day. In our last nap before the translunar injection we have been much more comfortable,” he commented.
Sleep like a bat
The crew members have taken a couple of naps in the first 30 hours of the mission. Some peculiar naps because they sleep floating. In the small space of Orion, approximately equivalent to two minivans, each one has found a way to accommodate themselves. “Sleeping here is quite curious. Christine has been sleeping upside down, in the center of the ship, like a bat suspended in the air. Victor, where is Jeremy now?” [Hansen, especialista de misión, canadiense, de 50 años, al que se ve durante la rueda de prensa tumbado a la izquierda de la pantalla]. “Jeremy has stretched out in seat one, and I’ve been sleeping under the panels in case something went wrong,” Wiseman explained. “It’s more comfortable than you’d think, and it’s nice to sleep in weightlessness again. Every time I was falling asleep, I felt like I was tripping over something and waking up. “My body is readjusting, because I haven’t been up here in years.”
The astronauts have highlighted the impressive views of the Earth that the trip has in store for them. “When Houston reoriented our ship, just as the sun was setting behind the Earth, we could see the entire planet from pole to pole. You could see Africa, Europe and, if you looked closely, the northern lights. It was the most spectacular moment. It left the four of us completely paralyzed,” said the commander.
ABC News journalist Gio Benitez asked the astronauts what message they wanted to send “to the American people” at a time when there is “a lot of division at home.” Pilot Glover, the first African-American to participate in a lunar mission, responded: “The first thing I would tell you is: trust us. From up here you look incredible and beautiful. And you look like one thing. Homo sapiens we are all, no matter where we come from or what we are like. We are one people. This mission gives us something to hold onto and say, look what we did. We call great human feats lunar missions for a reason: because they unite us and “They prove what we can achieve together,” said Glover, while the rest of the astronauts supported his statements, so different from the type of messages that US President Donald Trump sends daily, nodding their heads and patting his back.
