Artemis 2 NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman who commanded the first moon mission in half a century talks to Space.com about the parallels between the two moon efforts.
The 55th anniversary of Apollo 8's historical orbital mission in 1968.
The 55th anniversary of Apollo 8's historical orbital mission in 1968.
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00:00And we're speaking around the 55th anniversary of Apollo 8, which flew three astronauts around
00:05the moon in 1968. Artemis II's flyby is coming close to recreating that scenario. And so can
00:12you talk about the parallels between the two missions from your point of view?
00:16We see parallel. I wish Victor and Christina were in here because they would give you a far better
00:21answer. We see all those parallels. Let me give you two sides of an answer. First, the parallel
00:28I most like to draw right now is that we are building on the Mercury Gemini Apollo era for
00:35sure. But when I look at what we're doing in Artemis, it feels to me in Artemis that we are
00:40more building on the international space station and a long-term presence. I feel the international
00:46space station in everything we do. I feel the international community. I feel the way we do
00:50export control, the way we farm out hardware to different experts around the world. And then we
00:55pull all of this together. We have an international crew. We don't really have that, like, before
01:00this decade is out, we are going to do this. We don't feel that space race necessarily as
01:04the crew. But we do feel a really robust international team. Everywhere we go, we try to highlight the
01:10Artemis Accords. I think we're up to 32 nations, maybe even 33 now. So I just feel like this, to
01:16me, feels like it's built on the international space station legacy of a little slower, methodical,
01:22we're here for the long term. However, the day we got announced when you were here, April 3rd,
01:28sitting on my couch later that day, completely exhausted. My cell phone rings. It's an unknown
01:32number. I thought it was a telemarketer and I picked it up all annoyed. It was Tom Stafford,
01:37you know, who flew Apollo 10, not eight, but 10. And he was so excited that we were heading back to the
01:42moon. And just to know that we are going to go out and try to wrap Apollo 7, 8, and a little bit of
01:51like 10 into one mission, it's just, you know, Victor walks around and says, the moon is the
01:57mission. And he's right. Like, we have got to get used to flying out into deep space. We've got to get
02:01out of low earth orbit, start making it comfortable to go out to the moon. And that's what Artemis 2 is
02:06going to go do. And then Artemis 3 will do more than we could ever even dream of. So I love the
02:11parallels. I think Apollo 8, once we did Apollo 8, I think everybody in the United States knew we can
02:16land now. Like that was, that mission meant so much to just go and go and the systems work. Holy
02:23smokes. We can fly around the moon. We can read from the book at Genesis on Christmas Eve on the
02:27back, far side of the moon. You know, it's just, all that stuff is just amazing to me. So we do think
02:32about that legacy a lot.