NASA is counting down the hours before the first trip around the moon by astronauts since 1972. The mission of Artemis-2 begins with a ride to space aboard a rocket made here in Alabama. NASA has been building and testing spacecraft at the Marshall Space Center since the days of Project Apollo. Some of the engineers who made those trips possible are still in the Huntsville area and NASA knows it.
On the original rollout day for the Artemis two spacecraft, the four astronauts that make up the crew were at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to take questions from the press.
“But for this crew, we’ve been on this journey for about two and a half years, and we just we truly look at that and see teamwork,” said Artemis Commander Reed Weisman. He Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Jeremy Hansen of Canada will ride to Earth aboard NASA’s newest rocket. It’s called the Space Launch System, or SLS. It’s designed, built, tested and managed at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. And that’s not the only help the Artemis crew got.
“I’ve actually been very fortunate to become friends with Rusty Schweikert,” said Weisman before the moon mission. The Artemis crew member also flew aboard the International Space Station. “And Rusty gave me a bag of wisdom quotes from different cultures all over the world that I took to the space station.”…