Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen broke record for farthest distance traveled from Earth
The crew of the historic Artemis II lunar flyby mission have earned the US’s top space medal, officials have announced.
Cmdr Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen are set to receive the Congressional Space Medal of Honor on 28 August, the US space agency Nasa said.
Nasa’s website indicates that only 30 astronauts have gained the honor – among them Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon, and John Glenn, who was first to orbit Earth and then served four terms in the US Senate.
Wiseman, Glover, Koch and Hansen were selected for the medal, despite its name, by Donald Trump after the Nasa administrator, Jared Isaacman, recommended them to the president.
Very deserved. I will say, while I’m generally against private space stuff and vehemently against Trump, Isaacman is not doing a bad job.
The Canadian guys medal will have electronics inside. /s
Did the Apollo 13 guys get that too?
… Why?
For just sitting in the box
Piloting it for the docking maneuvers and the various burns, making observations on the far side of the moon and testing the life support equipment.
But sure, just sitting in a box.
It was a completely unnecessary stunt that could have been done with a probe. All to make people feel like you MAGA and it’s 1969 again. Meanwhile, the planet is literally on fire, while Whitey goes around the moon.
It was partly a trial run for Artemis IV, which will see humans land on the moon for the first time since 1972.
Artemis V will see humans begin building a permanent base on the moon.
At this particular point in time, thats a fucking stupid goal.
Adding more debris to the already-littered low earth orbit, heat and pollution to our home environment while we roast, drown, and get blown away by ultra-powerful storms, and for what? So some rich assholes can make more money. We earth-locked plebs get basically nothing from this, unlike prior missions.
Don’t get me wrong, I love space, I love space exploration and the technological progression that comes with it… I do not love this, and I do not love whats going on with said space exploration. I’m not usually one to say “lets not do xyz because we have bigger problems” but in the case where xyz directly contributes, in a big way, to those bigger problems, at a time when the people doing/supporting xyz are doing absolutely nothing to fix the bigger problem and are in fact trying to make it worse… yeah, now is really not the time for this stunty bullshit. Not from the US.
If JAXA, ESA, ASA, CSA, etc. were the ones proposing this, as a joint venture or some such, I’d be all for it. But it’s not.
Edit to add: I feel like “moon base!!!” Is the next iteration of “rich asshole private island doomsday bunker”. It’s the ultimate private island because normal people can’t even hope to get there to do sabotage, and its completely isolated from all the climate change problems. Very horizon, specifically the far zenith.
