New Delhi: After successfully executing a lunar flyby on the brand new Orion spaceship, and setting a new human spaceflight distance record, the Artemis II crew spoke to a ‘VIP’ who wanted to be the first to greet them once they were on the way home, US President Donald Trump. “Today you have made history, and made all America really proud, incredibly proud. We have a lot of things to be proud of lately but there is nothing like what you are doing, circling around the Moon for the first time in more than half a century, and breaking the all-time record for the farthest distance from planet Earth that humans have… really never seen anything quite like what you are doing.”

The world is watching the whole mission live. Trump said.  “I want to personally salute the Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, and I also want to thank the entire amazing team at NASA, headed by Jared, is a very special guy by the way. You all made this day possible, you all inspired the entire world really, everybody is watching, I find it incredible. I watched you go to the back of the Moon, and people have not gone there in a long time, we can say it is going to be more and more prevalent, because we are going to do a lot of traveling and then we are going to ultimately be doing the Whole Big Trip to Mars, and that is going to be very exciting.” While USA is returning to the Moon, the Artemis programme, right from its inception, has its eyes on Mars.

A two-planet species

Wiseman said, “As we came around to the near side of the Moon, seeing all the sights that we see from Earth for all of our lives, but we are seeing it from a different perspective, and then we started to get a glimpse of the far side, and we saw sites, Orientale, sights that no human has ever seen before, not even during Apollo and that was amazing for us. And then the surprise of the day, we just came out of an eclipse, where the Sun sat behind the Moon, and the entire dark Moon, about that big, right outside the window we were watching, and we could see the Solar Corona, and then we could see the planet train lined up, and we looked at Mars and all of us commented how excited we are to watch this nation and this planet become a two-planet species.”