As NASA rolled the mega moon rocket to the launchpad Thursday night, the astronauts preparing to ride it watched the spectacle from screens in their quarantine facility.
As of Wednesday evening, the Artemis II crew — Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen — reported to Johnson Space Center in Houston to begin their mandatory two-week isolation.
It’s a milestone moment for any space mission, but one the foursome has already experienced twice before for launch dates that came and went. Mission managers have been trying to launch the 10-day lunar voyage since February, but crews keep finding problems requiring repairs. Now they’re shooting for a launch window that begins April 1.
No one yet knows whether the third quarantine is the charm for Artemis II, but the policy protects the crew and their spaceflight from being derailed by everyday germs. After all, Wiseman, Glover, Koch, and Hansen will share extremely tight quarters in a sealed spacecraft as they journey around the moon. The Orion capsule, which they’ve named Integrity, is about the size of a studio apartment. Even a mild virus could spread quickly among them.
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