The primary moon commander in 50 years grins as an image of jets and a lunar rocket flashes up on the screen in front of him. “That was a fun day.”
NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman is the commander of Artemis 2, which goals to fly 4 people around the moon in 2024 or so. During an exclusive with Space.com on Dec. 18, nonetheless, we talked over Zoom concerning the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission that launched in late 2022 and successfully tested out many of the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System (SLS) rocket systems to ready for Wiseman’s crew. Hence, the jet picture.
Wiseman was amongst a small group of astronauts flying the famous T-38 jet trainers past the Artemis 1 SLS on the launch pad on Aug. 23, 2022. No one knew it back then, but three of the 4 Artemis 2 crew were within the tight formation: Wiseman, NASA mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen. (Only absent was NASA pilot Victor Glover, who was away on other duties on the time.)
“That picture evokes a whole lot of emotion. Most of it’s positive,” Wiseman joked. It took months of logistics, he recalled, to get the permissions and the time for the now-iconic flyby.
In 2022, Wiseman was chief of the astronaut office and chargeable for all NASA astronaut assignments to spaceflights. (He stepped down from the role in November 2022 to be eligible for energetic duty again, just in time for the big Artemis 2 announcement on April 3, 2023.)
Wiseman told Space.com he would stroll the halls of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, where the astronaut office is headquartered. He would take a look at the photos of the International Space Station and the space shuttle on the partitions. But for Artemis, a brand-new program that goals to land humans on the moon within the 2020s and follow within the footsteps of the Apollo program of the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies? “We actually did not have any picture that type of hit home.”
Artemis 1 first rolled out to Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on March 17, 2022 to start several months of testing (and a few journeys backwards and forwards to NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Constructing). Wiseman said the astronaut office had a robust response to Artemis 1 sitting on the pad for the primary time: “A bunch of us are like, ‘We have got to fly over that vehicle.’ “
Read more: What 8,000 hours flying military jets taught 2 Canadian astronauts
Needless to say there was the sheer excitement of flying in formation, and the usefulness of the practice time for the astronauts (who need to take care of flying proficiency for his or her work.) But Wiseman also saw a public relations opportunity: “We have got to remind those who there’s humans involved, and we fly airplanes, and we now have spacecraft. It is a key moment for NASA.”
Wiseman and fellow naval aviator and astronaut Matthew Dominick (now commander of the SpaceX Crew-8 mission) held quite a few meetings to plan the procedures. “He finally ends up not even being in the image,” Wiseman lamented of Dominick, in any case that work.
“It cost him several months of his life to get this through all the security wickets,” Wiseman continued, laughing. “There have been so many clearances to get to fly by that national asset on the launch pad. But ultimately, we decided we needed to persevere and provides that a shot.”
All told, five T-38s were involved within the flyby: 4 within the image with eight individuals inside, and one out of frame crewed by NASA photographer Josh Valcarcel and experienced “chase plane” pilot and NASA astronaut candidate Jack Hathaway. The group stayed in crew quarters at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center the night before to prepare for the large day.
Read more: 1 12 months after Artemis 1 launch, NASA readies Artemis 2 to shoot for the moon again (video)
Wiseman is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School and former test pilot whose programs include the F-35 Lightning II and F-18 weapons separation. He also made two deployments to the Middle East and has 1000’s of hours in combat aircraft, not to say 165 days of experience in space. Nevertheless, Wiseman found surprises in the course of the pad flyby.
“We woke up the subsequent day, and we did this mission flying over,” Wiseman recalled. “I forgot how exhausting it’s to fly close formation, down low. We were all very drained at the top of a brief, 45-minute flight. However it was just an awesome experience.”
Wiseman said the flyby had quite a few personal touchstones. He flew with two individuals who can be on his Artemis 2 crew. He was within the air with NASA pilot Chris Condon, who Wiseman has known since 1999. Also, the group flew the identical type of training aircraft as Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, the primary person to walk on the moon on July 20, 1969. On top of all that was seeing a moon rocket, rated to hold passengers, on a launch pad that after hosted Apollo and space shuttle launches.
“That entire event was only a marquee moment of the long run of Artemis on a historic launch pad,” Wiseman said. “There was a lot emotion tied to that day.”