{"id":22694,"date":"2026-04-04T08:57:29","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T08:57:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2026\/04\/04\/artemis-ii-astronauts-send-message-from-space-as-they-head-to-the-moon\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T08:57:29","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T08:57:29","slug":"artemis-ii-astronauts-send-message-from-space-as-they-head-to-the-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2026\/04\/04\/artemis-ii-astronauts-send-message-from-space-as-they-head-to-the-moon\/","title":{"rendered":"Artemis II Astronauts Send Message From Space As They Head To The Moon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div style=\"position:relative\" data-narration-container=\"true\">\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">The Artemis II mission is officially headed to the Moon after NASA gave the go-ahead for its Orion spacecraft to leave Earth\u2019s orbit for the next stage of its historic space mission.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Orion fired its main engine at 7:49 p.m. EST on Thursday, sending the four astronauts aboard out of Earth\u2019s orbit and onto a trajectory toward the Moon. The crew is set to travel around the Moon and could venture farther than any humans have since the Apollo 13 mission in 1970.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">\u201cNominal translunar injection burn complete. The Artemis II crew is officially on the way to the Moon,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/NASAAdmin\/status\/2039857997556416676\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">said<\/a> NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. \u201cAmerica is back in the business of sending astronauts to the Moon. This time, farther than ever before.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>On Friday morning, NASA posted a picture showing the view of the astronauts from Orion as they continued toward the moon.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Good morning, world! \ud83c\udf0e<\/p>\n<p>We have spectacular new high-resolution images of our home planet, all of us looking back through the Orion capsule window at our Artemis II astronauts as they continue their journey to the Moon. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/QjxGfWiRcS\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">pic.twitter.com\/QjxGfWiRcS<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 NASA (@NASA) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NASA\/status\/2040059740848283920?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">April 3, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">As Orion departed Earth\u2019s orbit, the four astronauts spoke from space in a broadcast from NASA to ABC and Fox News. Commander Reid Wiseman, who is leading the mission, began by giving a shout-out to the astronauts\u2019 families.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">\u201cThere was a moment about an hour ago where Mission Control Houston reoriented our spacecraft as the sun was setting behind the Earth,\u201d he said from the spacecraft while answering questions from ABC News during the broadcast. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t know what we all expected to see in that moment, but you could see the entire globe from pole to pole. You could see Africa, Europe, and if you looked really close, you could see the Northern Lights. \u2029It was the most spectacular moment, and it paused all four of us in our tracks.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"f81dxqUauuk\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Watch: Artemis II astronauts take questions on their way toward the moon\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/f81dxqUauuk?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Wiseman said the astronauts had a busy first few days and that the magnitude of the mission was only starting to set in. He said they had only taken two very quick naps during the first 30 hours of the mission and had only just eaten their first meal together.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">\u201cWe had been to the moon before in 1969, 1968 through 1972. It\u2019s been a long time since we\u2019ve been back. And I got to tell you, there is nothing normal about this. \u2029Sending four humans 250,000 miles away is a herculean effort, and we are now just realizing the gravity of that,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">The other astronauts on the mission are pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Koch said she hoped any milestone reached by the Artemis II crew would be surpassed by future missions when asked by Fox News reporter Trace Gallagher about the historic reach of the mission.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">\u201cWe think that the journey that we\u2019ve been on, and all of our teams have been on with us, is so much more than just one number, but we also hope that that number just keeps being exceeded and exceeded by the future crews,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt has been a great couple of days, just learning how to live in Orion,\u201d Koch told Gallagher. \u201cLiving in Orion isn\u2019t quite the same as being at home with our families, but, yes, some of the exciting things are the burns that we do. \u2029They kick off with such an acceleration that most things that you see velcroed around that aren\u2019t actually fastened down, all fall down to the floor of Orion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Koch noted that she was sleeping with her head toward the \u201cfloor\u201d of Orion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is no difference between up and down, and so, yes, I\u2019ve been sleeping with my feet there and my head down here, and it\u2019s very comfortable,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">NASA has said that the mission has gone smoothly so far, apart from a brief loss of two-way communications between ground control and the crew due to an issue on the ground. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Crew members are currently preparing a \u201clunar targeting plan,\u201d which will guide their observations of the Moon\u2019s surface during a six-hour window on Monday. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/artemis-ii-astronauts-send-message-from-space-as-they-head-to-the-moon\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Artemis II mission is officially headed to the Moon after NASA gave the go-ahead for its Orion spacecraft to leave Earth\u2019s orbit for the next stage of its historic space mission.\u00a0 Orion fired its main engine at 7:49 p.m. EST on Thursday, sending the four astronauts aboard out of Earth\u2019s orbit and onto a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-current-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}