Astronauts on NASA Moon Mission Aim to Make Space Great for All
In a preview of their flight, the crew of Artemis II, three Americans and a Canadian, struck a tone that veered away from the political currents of the moment.
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Kenneth Chang attended two days of briefings and tours at the Johnson Space Center in Houston on the status of NASA’s Artemis II moon mission.
Four astronauts took the stage on Wednesday at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and spoke of nations working together and of inspiring everyone everywhere.
“Collaboration needs to be the ultimate goal if eight billion of us are going to have a bright future on this planet,” said Jeremy Hansen, an astronaut from the Canadian Space Agency, during a NASA news conference.
He and three American astronauts are set to travel around the moon and back to Earth as soon as next February in the NASA mission called Artemis II.
“As we come around the far side, just having humanity stop for a moment and say, ‘Wow, look at what we can do when we work together,’ let’s just set goals to do a better job of that on this planet today,” Mr. Hansen said.
The remarks of Mr. Hansen as well as Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch of NASA seemed at times out of step with today’s polarized nation and world. They were also in marked contrast with what Sean Duffy, who is the acting administrator of NASA in addition to serving as the U.S. transportation secretary, said a couple of days earlier.
During a ceremony on Monday announcing the next 10 people slated to join NASA’s astronaut corps, Mr. Duffy depicted the moon program as a race between the United States and China, which has said it is aiming to land its astronauts on the moon by 2030.
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