San Francisco Frontiers - 'Chills': Artemis astronauts say lunar flyby still washing over them

"Human minds should not go through what these just went through," said NASA's Artemis II mission commander Reid Wiseman during a press conference from space.

"It is a true gift. And we have a lot that we just need to think about and journal and write, and then we'll get the full feeling of what we just went through."

The four astronauts -- Americans Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch as well as Canadian Jeremy Hansen -- set a record for distance from Earth during their lunar flyby.

The astronauts were speaking to news media less than two days before they are scheduled to splash down in the Pacific Ocean at the end of their 10-day mission around the Moon.

"I haven't even begun to process what we've been through," Glover said. "We've still got two more days, and riding a fireball through the atmosphere is profound as well."

"I'm going to be thinking about and talking about all of these things for the rest of my life."

Wiseman said the solar eclipse was particularly poignant: "I'm actually in chills right now just thinking about it, my palms are sweating."

- 'Fragile planet' -

Asked what they would miss about celestial life, Koch said "camaraderie."

"I will miss being this close with this many people and having a common purpose, a common mission, getting to work on it hard every day across hundreds of thousands of miles with a team on the ground," she said.

"This sense of teamwork is something that you don't usually get, like, as an adult," Koch added. "I mean we are close like brothers and sisters. That is a privilege we will never have again."

But she said even though they've been sharing a small space -- and a malfunctioning toilet -- for more than a week now, "I don't think there's anything I would say... that I'm just ready to be over."

"This whole thing is a package. We can't explore deeper unless we are doing a few things that are inconvenient, unless we're making a few sacrifices, unless we're taking a few risks," she said.

"Those things are all worth it."

Koch said the team has "loved living in Orion," their spacecraft, even though it was tight quarters.

"It is bigger in microgravity," she said, but "we are bumping into each other 100 percent of the time."

Hansen said he witnessed things "I just had never even imagined" while flying around the Moon's far side.

But he said his perspective on life remains rooted: "We live on a fragile planet in the vacuum and the void of space."

"Our purpose on the planet as humans is to find joy... and lifting each other up by creating solutions together instead of destroying," Hansen told journalists from his vantage point cruising far above home.

"When you see it from out here, it doesn't change it. It just absolutely reaffirms that."

R.Baker--SFF