Reid Wiseman talks about temporal disorientation in space and the Orion spacecraft, which is moving away from Earth at about a mile per second
The astronaut, 50 years old, pilot and commander of the Artemis 2 mission, in a statement to the NASA control team this Sunday (April 5, 2026), spoke about having “lost track of the days”. This feeling reported by the commander is common in deep space missions, where there are no time zones or natural day and night cycles. To organize the internal routine and schedule activities such as sleep and experiments, the crew uses the Met (Mission Elapsed Time) system, a digital chronometer that counts days, hours and minutes from the exact moment of takeoff on April 1st.
To maintain synchronization with teams on the ground and official records, (Coordinated Universal Time) as a global reference. However, the confined environment of Orion – the spacecraft in which the crew travels –, comparable to the space of two vans, and the constant noise from the systems can alter the astronauts’ internal clock. Therefore, the agency uses artificial lighting and a rigorous schedule to try to mitigate temporal disorientation and impacts on crew performance during the 10-day mission.
The astronaut also highlighted the speed of the ship: “We are 151,476 miles from Earth, and that distance increases by about a mile per second.”. This value represents approximately 243,776 km of distance between Orion and the planet.
If we consider this distance traveled per second and calculate the speed in km per hour, the spacecraft moves at around 5,792 km per hour in relation to Earth. That’s approximately 6 times faster than a Boeing 747 and about 5 times the speed of sound. Despite seeming very fast, this speed is still much lower than that of rockets that launch ships into space or the speed of the International Space Station in low orbit, which exceeds 28,000 km per hour.
In addition to the numbers, the commander described the view of Earth from space: “In window 3, you can see the crescent Earth, with sunlight reflecting off the oceans and swirling clouds – a truly incredible sight.”
Here is Wiseman’s speech translated into Portuguese:
“Hi Houston, we’re ready to board the DBC. Just a few things: We heard a rumor here that on Earth it’s actually Saturday. We’ve definitely lost track of days.”
“We’re 151,476 miles from Earth, and that distance increases by about a mile per second, which is still a pretty impressive rate of travel. Thanks to the operations team down there we were able to get light in through all the windows.”
“In window 3, you can see the crescent Earth, with sunlight reflecting off the oceans and swirling clouds, a truly incredible sight.
“We are ready for transmission.”
Reid Wiseman
American Wiseman, 50, is a Navy veteran with 27 years of service, father, pilot and the commander of the Artemis 2 mission.
He was selected as an astronaut in 2009 and served as a flight engineer aboard the International Space Station on Expedition 41 from May to November 2014.
During the 165-day mission, Wiseman and his team performed more than 300 scientific experiments in areas such as human physiology, medicine, physical sciences, Earth sciences and astrophysics. They set a science milestone at the station by completing a record 82 hours of research in a single week. This was Wiseman’s first spaceflight, which included almost 13 hours as an extravehicular activity leader during 2 exits from orbit.
He holds a bachelor of science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, and a master of systems engineering from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He also served as head of the Astronaut Office from December 2020 to November 2022.
