They're going to the Moon and they know not everyone is with them

Why go back to the moon anyway?

In the 1960s and '70s, NASA landed 12 Americans on the lunar surface. Not everyone understands why we are trying to do it again.

To the four astronauts of Artemis II, the first crewed mission around the moon in more than 50 years, the answer is simple.

Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen each remember looking up at the moon as children, and feeling small. They all felt part of something much greater than themselves. They say recreating that feeling is reason enough to go back.

"I've been thinking, in the world that it is today, what are the things that we could do to best lift up our friends on Planet Earth?" said Wiseman, 50, the mission's commander, in an interview in January. "And what I came to was, We've just got to go do this mission."

"I hope we have a great impact on bringing the world together, even just for a minute," he added. "We don't need any stunts. We don't need any magic tricks."

Koch, one of the Artemis II crew's mission specialists, added her own take on why they are going.

"No one person can be as great as this mission," she said. "I like to think we explore, especially deeper and deeper, truly just to learn about ourselves."

There are more reasons proposed for sending Koch and her crewmates on this journey. Some American policymakers want to return to the moon before China lands its first crew there. Others hope this mission, and planned American moon landings in 2028 and beyond, will rouse a spirit of adventure central to American identity.

Yet as NASA has scheduled Artemis II, it is a moment of conflict and division at home and abroad. When the astronauts lift off as soon as Wednesday, will hundreds of millions of people in the United States and around the world pause and feel as if they are part of something bigger? Or is American society too fractured and distracted for people to feel united around the latest moonshot?

Glover, the mission's pilot, noted the parallels between his mission and the launch of Apollo 8 in 1968, another tumultuous year in American history, remembered for the assassinations of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

"That was a tough time in the country," he said, "and I hope that we can create a touch point for our generation that's equal to, or maybe there's a path to be even greater than, because it's current and it's ours."

Glover, 49, will be the first Black person to journey to the moon. Koch, 47, will be the first woman to head there. Another mission specialist, Hansen, 50, a Canadian, will be the first non-U.S. citizen to accomplish the feat.

Family members, friends, classmates and former professors and coaches made the case in recent interviews for why these four astronauts have a chance to create a moment of mass inspiration. Just as the Apollo missions made people stop and look, they say the Artemis II crew can bring a revival of the awe, the wonder and the sublime of space exploration.

"This is the moment where we should all start believing again," Jared Isaacman, the NASA administrator, said recently in a speech outlining changes to American space policy. He added, "NASA once changed everything, and we're going to do it again."

The Commander | Reid Wiseman

In 1993, Marc Eigner received an introductory letter from the person who would be his freshman-year roommate at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. The note, signed by Reid Wiseman, instructed him about where they would buy furniture for their dorm room. It also said they were going to have a great time.

Eigner thought that either he was going to hate the guy or they would be best friends forever. Friendship won, and Wiseman and Eigner bonded over fast cars, racquetball and studying and partying together. In 2014, Wiseman called from orbit as Eigner was driving through the Holland Tunnel.

"Reid is the American dream come true," Eigner said.

After graduating in 1997, Wiseman served as a fighter pilot in the U.S. Navy, with two deployments in the Middle East, before becoming a test pilot. He joined NASA in 2009.

The excitement of life as an astronaut was accompanied by overwhelming stress ahead of a nearly six-month stay on the International Space Station. He worried he might never see his family again. He credited the love and the support of his wife, Carroll, a pediatric nurse practitioner. Wiseman was ready to give up his life as an astronaut when she was diagnosed with cancer, but she refused to let him, according to The Sunday Times.

Carroll Wiseman died in 2020, at 46, around the time Reid Wiseman began serving as the chief of NASA's astronaut office. He left that post in 2022, and in March 2023 learned he had been selected to lead the moon mission.

He dreaded having to tell his daughters, Ellie and Katherine, that he would leave the Earth again.

The next morning, Wiseman awoke in his Houston home and found moon-shape cupcakes. They had been baked by Ellie, the family member who, he said, had probably been most against his astronaut career earlier in his life.

Commanding a mission to the moon is a serious endeavor, but Eigner describes Wiseman as a friend not above some mischief.

The two have been locked in a 30-year competition over who can be the last to say "F.Y." -- a shortened version of a phrase with a four-letter expletive -- to the other. They have left each other the message in places like a card in Braille and custom M&M's. They continued the game through Wiseman's trip to the space station.

"We called it a draw, and for now the game is over," said Eigner. "I'm trying to work it into something related to the moon.

The Pilot | Victor Glover

When Andre Patterson coached football at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, he had a defensive back named Victor Glover who wouldn't quit. He struggled with Patterson's defensive system, failing over and over again to execute certain plays. But near the end of the 1996 season, Glover batted away a deep ball down the sideline late in a game, helping the Mustangs clinch a championship.

"He may not have been the fastest guy out there or the most athletic guy out there, but he was going to succeed since he was the best technician out there," said Patterson, who most recently was the defensive line coach for the New York Giants.

Glover finished college in 1999 and became a naval aviator, serving in Iraq and later became a test pilot. He was working as a legislative fellow in Sen. John McCain's office when NASA selected him as an astronaut in 2013.

He did not get to space until 2021 when the SpaceX capsule he was assigned to was finally ready to fly. As part of the Crew-1 mission, he became the first Black astronaut to serve as a member of a full-duration ISS crew.

Patterson wasn't surprised to see him headed to orbit.

"Whether he decided he wanted to go to space, whether he decided he wanted to be in Congress or the president, if that's what he put his mind to, Victor was going to work his tail off to get it," he said.

Early in his naval career, a commanding officer gave Glover the call sign Ike, for I Know Everything. That was reflected in his bid to become an astronaut. As he prepared for his interview, he said in the podcast "NASA's Curious Universe," he pored over files and listened to recordings from the Apollo missions. He soon came to live by a set of questions: How do I use it? How do I break it? How does it break me?

When he sat down for his astronaut interview, he joked about what he called the pilot's real role on a space shuttle: making sure the toilet worked.

"I would be the plumber if they needed it fixed," Glover said.

He actually did some of that work on the space station. He said Wiseman informed him that he was scheduled to make sure the toilet worked during Artemis II's second day in space.

"Fate is not without a sense of humor," Glover said.

He also reflected in the NASA podcast on his own seriousness about heading to the moon when he and his wife were discussing the Artemis II assignment with two of his four daughters.

The conversation had become methodical with a hint of melancholy, he said on the NASA podcast. Finally, one of his daughters had enough. It was time for her dad to lighten up and focus on the fact that he was going to the moon.

"Let's go!" she shouted.

Mission Specialist No. 1 | Christina Koch

Like her 2013 astronaut classmate Glover, Christina Koch has already made history at NASA. In 2019, she and astronaut Jessica Meir completed the first all-female spacewalk aboard the International Space Station. After 328 days in space, she set a record for longest single spaceflight by a woman.

Koch is quick to downplay any mention of superlatives, saying it does "a disservice to the real work that we're doing."

"For me, all these firsts are really not about one individual's accomplishments but celebrating where we are at," she said in the January interview.

Koch, who lives in Galveston, Texas, with her husband, is the one member of the crew without a military background.

She was just 12 years old, growing up in North Carolina, when she said she knew for sure she wanted to be an astronaut. She covered her walls with posters she had bought from the gift shop at Kennedy Space Center during family vacations. Already a member of her middle school's rocket club, she was a self-described geek finding new things to fix and build with her father.

After graduating from North Carolina State University, Koch worked at the Goddard Space Flight Center, and then completed research during a rugged winter at the South Pole. After Antarctica, Koch became an electrical engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland.

There, she showed talent developing instruments for NASA missions like the Juno spacecraft that orbits Jupiter, said Steve Jaskulek and Chuck Schlemm, two members of the lab's space department. She also helped create sweet treats for her lab mates using liquid nitrogen at ice-cream socials.

Her co-workers described her as a good colleague, remarking on her modesty and distinctive drive.

"Christina competes with Christina," Schlemm said. "I don't think she's really in competition with other people. She's into making herself better, and I don't think she realized that the rest of the world was watching her."

Jaskulek added, "She's very proud of the role she's had in encouraging other young girls and women to go into science and reach for the astronaut corps."

Mission Specialist No. 2 | Jeremy Hansen

Sitting with his crewmates on Stephen Colbert's couch in April 2023, Jeremy Hansen joked about why the U.S. space agency was really flying a Canadian to the moon.

"If something goes wrong on this mission, then NASA can blame Canada," he quipped.

He is the latest Canadian astronaut to work with Americans in a decades-long partnership. A pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force who joined the Canadian Space Agency in 2009, Hansen is the only member of the Artemis II crew who has not been to space.

But ever since his father built him an elaborate tree house on their farm in Ontario that acted as his first spaceship, getting there has been on his mind. His wife, Dr. Catherine Hansen, said that before they even started dating he had told her he wanted to be an astronaut.

His effort to become an astronaut was challenging for the couple. They had to juggle it with his wife's work as an on-call 24/7 OB-GYN and their three children.

Jeremy Hansen admits he can be too laser-focused on his mission, forgetting to celebrate life's wins. During the interview in January in Houston he said that to prepare for Artemis II he had gone on a vision quest with a Canadian Indigenous elder to grapple with a question: How can I possibly be happy when people are dying and suffering?

He finally came to an answer: "All you have to do is wake up every day and just use your energy for good."

"You can't fix all the problems in the world, but you can influence the little bit around you, and that's just a simple recipe for allowing yourself to feel that joy," Hansen said.

While everyone celebrates the launch, Catherine Hansen said, she won't be fully happy until her husband is back on solid ground.

"There'll be nine days where I will not yet be able to completely relax until he's home, and we will have another hoot and holler and dance and sing when we reunite," she said.

NASA's New Landscape

The ability of the Artemis II crew to inspire another generation faces political and cultural challenges.

During both his administrations, President Donald Trump has set a lasting return to the moon as a priority. At the same time, scores of jobs were eliminated at NASA last year, and Trump's administration proposed a drastic budget cut to the agency that was eventually rejected by Congress. The White House has also suggested that it is only Trump who is able to "make space great again."

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., who flew to space four times as a NASA astronaut, gave voice to the concern that Trump might politicize a return to the moon.

"If I ever got to talk to Donald Trump about this, I'd tell him to use this as an opportunity to unite Americans," Kelly said in an interview that occurred weeks before the senator sued Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over administrative actions that could reduce Kelly's military rank in retirement. "I think we all understand at this point that going to the moon should not be a partisan exercise."

The cultural landscape facing the four astronauts and the Artemis program as a whole is also far less romantic and aspirational compared with that of the Apollo era.

In fact, the rise of influencer culture has added momentum to the conspiracy theory that the 1969 moon landing was staged.

In October, Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary serving as acting NASA administrator, defended the reality of Apollo 11 in response to remarks by reality TV star Kim Kardashian.

And when 90-year-old Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke, one of the four moonwalkers still living, went on a show hosted by podcaster Danny Jones in December, a moon-landing denier repeatedly called Duke a liar.

After nearly four hours of discussion, Duke summed up his response: "I don't know whether they sent everyone else, but they sent me to the moon," he said. "I'll stand by that."

The astronauts of Artemis II have had firsthand encounters with people who suggest that the moon landing was fake, or that resources should not be spent to go back to the moon. Glover says he thanks those who share such beliefs and meditates about what they have to say.

"The entire country may not be with us," he said. "But if we do our job right, the best thing we can do is give them our best effort, and maybe they'll look back on it and say, 'Hey, that was inspirational.'"

The Moment They're Waiting For

For all the hope that Artemis II may bring people together, its crew members have an interesting definition of what would make the mission a success.

"We want to quickly be forgotten, so that you interview the next crews," Glover said in January.

While they yearn to fade away, there is one moment they don't want forgotten. During a three-hour window, they could be the first to lay human eyes, rather than photographic and telescopic lenses, on parts of the far side of the moon.

When this unfolds, Hansen said he will wish that the world would also stop to take in what's still possible.

Wiseman said he will be glued to the window, in wonderment of the magic trick by which Earth will leave and then return into their view.

Glover said he plans to take videos and photos of his crewmates, wanting to remember their facial expressions forever.

And Koch will take a moment to recognize what she can and can't feel while being in space.

"You don't feel things like envy," or anger, she said, adding, "You feel awe and you feel togetherness, and I think what you don't feel is just as important as what you do feel."

That moment will belong to the four of them.

Despite their best efforts, it won't feel small.