President Donald Trump called the astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II mission on Monday evening to congratulate them for their flyby of the Moon, the first in over half a century.
“Today you have entered into History and you have made all of America truly proud, incredibly proud,” he said during a phone call to the three Americans and the Canadian crew member. “You are truly the pioneers of our time.”
However, since returning to power, President Donald Trump has harshly criticized the scientific sector, cutting funding, suspending projects, and significantly reducing staff.
NASA’s mission, which sent astronauts around the Moon for the first time in over half a century, further into space than ever before, represents a breath of fresh air for scientists.
“This mission is a great positive moment,” said Jacob Bleacher, Chief of Exploration Scientific at NASA. “People have been working on this for months, years, sometimes more than a decade,” he explained.
The majority of Americans, including NASA researchers, were not yet born when the Apollo missions first sent humans to the Moon in the late 1960s.
“The legend held an important place in minds, but it was always in the past… until today,” said Jacob Bleacher from the Johnson Space Center in Houston. “It’s just surreal.”
“This is the first opportunity for my generation to really embark on and accomplish it,” he added. “I like to think of it as paving the way for future explorations of the solar system by humanity.”
Difficult Preparation Conditions
Donald Trump had pressured NASA to have astronauts land on the Moon before the end of his second term in 2029.
But last week, the White House proposed a 23% cut in the agency’s overall budget and significantly reduced funding for its scientific programs.
Artemis II was therefore carried out “under very difficult conditions,” explained Clayton Swope from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
In this context, the successful launch of the spacecraft and the mission’s progress are “a real morale boost,” said Amanda Nahm, a researcher at NASA headquarters.
The four astronauts of the Artemis II mission – Americans Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and Reid Wiseman, along with Canadian Jeremy Hansen – ventured further into space on Monday than any human before them as they performed an exceptional flyby of the dark side of the Moon, revealing a lunar surface subjected to cosmic bombardment.
This six-hour exploration of the usually hidden hemisphere of Earth’s only natural satellite was marked by direct visual observations of impact flashes caused by meteors striking the dark and heavily cratered lunar surface. One of the craters was named in honor of Carroll Taylor Wiseman, wife of mission commander Reid Wiseman.
They are now heading back to Earth.
