Biden hosts 4 NASA astronauts, the primary crew aiming to fly across the moon in a half-century

WASHINGTON — The 4 astronauts assigned to fly across the moon for the primary time in 50 years met with President Joe Biden on Thursday on the White House, the place he confirmed off an moon rock on show within the Oval Office that was collected within the Apollo period.

The Artemis II crew – three Americans and one Canadian – mentioned the president was making good on a promise to host them on the White House after they had been named to the mission earlier this 12 months. They additionally met with Vice President Kamala Harris.

“It’s been really nice to shake their hands and tell them thank you for their leadership and making it possible for us to have this amazing journey,” mentioned pilot Victor Glover.

The 4 astronauts would be the first to fly NASA’s Orion capsule, launching atop a Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy Space Center no sooner than late 2024. They is not going to land and even go into lunar orbit, however reasonably fly across the moon and head straight again to Earth, a prelude to a lunar touchdown by two others deliberate for a 12 months later.

“As the crew, we don’t even think about the date,” mentioned commander Reid Wiseman. “We will go when NASA and the vehicle are ready to fly.”

In the meantime, the crew is getting ready. They use simulators and work with Mission Control on tips on how to stand up and again safely, together with tips on how to get out after they return to Earth. They have a gown rehearsal in February the place they’ll follow “bobbing around” in a capsule within the Pacific Ocean.

“It takes a huge team of people to put four humans … to sling them around the moon and back and still have them breathing when they hit the Pacific. And we work with them every single day,” mentioned mission specialist Jeremy Hansen, the Canadian member of the group.

This is the primary moon crew to incorporate somebody from outdoors the U.S. – and the primary crew in NASA’s new moon program named Artemis, after the dual sister of mythology’s Apollo. Late final 12 months, an empty Orion capsule flew across the moon and again in a long-awaited gown rehearsal.

The astronauts received their first take a look at their spaceship in August. But investigations into the capsule’s warmth defend may delay their journey. Last 12 months’s take a look at flight across the moon, with nobody on board, resulted in sudden charring and lack of materials from the warmth defend on the backside of the capsule. The warmth defend is supposed to guard the capsule in opposition to the acute warmth of reentry.

Mission specialist Christina Koch mentioned Biden talked a few speech John F. Kennedy gave in 1962 on the mission to the moon, and he referenced the half the place Kennedy mentioned the U.S. would go to the moon as a result of the purpose was a problem and “one we are unwilling to postpone.”

“And that shows to me that he is committed to the mission that we have, that we are going to show through his leadership that we can do great things,” she mentioned.

During Apollo, NASA despatched 24 astronauts to the moon from 1968 by 1972. Twelve of them landed. All had been military-trained male take a look at pilots aside from Apollo 17’s Harrison Schmitt, a geologist who closed out that moon-landing period alongside the late Gene Cernan.

The moon rock on show within the Oval Office – Lunar Sample 76015,143 – is on mortgage from NASA. It was collected in 1972 by Schmitt and Cernan. The rock is believed to be about 3.9 billion years previous, and it weighs rather less than a pound.