GoKawiilEven if you're 250,000 miles from Earth, sleep is important. However, for all the life-sustaining accouterments aboard the Orion spacecraft, the capsule lacked bedrooms, leaving the four-person Artemis II crew with a truly bizarre sleeping arrangement.
"I slept really close to an air conditioning vent. And so I'd wake up and I just see this big hunk of metal," Glover told CNET during a video call. "And it was like, 'Oh, I'm in space. I am weightless.'"
Sleep wasn't just a means for the astronauts to recharge; it also grounded them during their historic journey. Glover explained, "What really resonated with me is we're also humans. It's like camping, and this is a very important part of this journey."
Artemis II was the first crewed mission to the moon in over 50 years. It follows Artemis I, a 2022 unmanned mission that was the first for NASA's new Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. The goal for Artemis II was to have a crew test the spacecraft, life support systems, the SLS rocket and the procedures needed for future lunar missions that will involve landing on the moon and even building a base there.
Glover, the Orion's pilot, along with commander Reid Wiseman, mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, made up the Artemis II crew. The mission made a lot of history. It's the first time a woman, a black man, or a Canadian has journeyed to the moon. The four Artemis II astronauts traveled 252,756 miles from Earth, farther than any other human being, surpassing the previous record set by the 1970 Apollo 13 mission.
This image of NASA's Orion spacecraft was taken with a camera mounted on its solar array wings. NASA
This wasn't Glover's first time in space. In 2020, using a Falcon 9 rocket for liftoff, he piloted the Crew Dragon capsule to and from the International Space Station for NASA's SpaceX Crew-1 mission, spending over 167 days in space. But Artemis II gave Glover the opportunity to be the first to fly the Orion, a new vehicle designed for Artemis missions. For the majority of the nearly 10-day journey, Orion was on autopilot. But Glover had several opportunities to take manual control of the spacecraft to test its handling.
"It was such a treat and a joy," Glover said about flying the Orion. "It was a test pilot's dream to fly a new spaceship for the first time by hand."
Even after spending time training to fly in a simulator back on Earth, he was surprised by how responsive the Orion's hand controller was and how clear the cameras looked, which are used to maneuver the craft around the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage that holds the fuel for the upper stage of liftoff. He said the actual camera and monitors were like "looking out a window."
Artemis II astronaut and pilot Victor Glover wears an orange flight suit. NASA
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