The Artemis II astronauts are set to take questions about their moon journey - CNN

The four Artemis II astronauts, fresh off a bold and risky mission that captured the hearts of a world in tumult, took questions Thursday for the first time since their return.

The crew — including NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — has been back on Earth for one week after a history-making, slingshot trip around the moon. They’ve found themselves newly minted celebrities.

“When we came home, we were shocked at the global outpouring of support, of pride, of ownership of this mission,” Wiseman said Thursday. “That’s what the four of us wanted. We wanted to go out and try to do something that would bring the world together.”

The 10-day mission marked the first time astronauts have traveled as far as the moon since the final Apollo flight in 1972. The crew also ventured deeper into space than any human before, surpassing the Apollo 13 record set in 1970.

Koch added that it was difficult to describe “how much it meant to us to hear that the mission had an impact.”

“I cannot overstate how important that was to us,” Koch said of inspiring the public. “It was every bit as important as accomplishing the technical goals and being there for our NASA teammates was to make this the world’s mission.”

Five seconds of free fall

Last week, the crew returned to Earth, enduring the jarring moment of reentry — the point at which the astronauts hit Earth’s thick inner atmosphere while their capsule was still traveling more than 30 times the speed of sound.

Glover described it as a visceral experience, having been stunned by the sound of parachutes deploying after the Orion capsule plummeted through the air and experienced a six-minute communications blackout due to plasma created by the sheer speed at which their vehicle was moving.

“If you dove off … a skyscraper backwards, that’s what it felt like for five seconds,” Glover said, referring to the moment the capsule went into free fall after a set of parachutes broke away.

During reentry, as the spacecraft first encounters air molecules, a violent wave of compression can conjure temperatures of up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Protecting the crew during this phase of reentry is the heat shield, a layer at the bottom of the Orion capsule that is designed to char and erode in order to dissipate the heat and keep the capsule’s interior at a comfortable temperature.

The Artemis II astronauts are heading home. The biggest risks could still lie ahead

On this mission, NASA flew the Orion capsule with a suboptimal heat shield. During the news conference, the astronauts said they believe they saw a moment of “char loss” — an instance in which the heat shield may have had portions become dislodged. Such char loss was seen during the Artemis I uncrewed test flight in 2022, and NASA hoped to mitigate the issue by flying Artemis II with a modified reentry trajectory. But the agency did not replace or change the heat shield between missions.

“We came in faster. We came in hot,” Wiseman said of the altered reentry path.

Despite the char loss, Wiseman said, “looking out the window that whole way in, it was a smooth ride.” He added that the astronauts are awaiting NASA’s full analysis of how the heat shield performed.

‘Looking for signs of agitation’

The crew was also candid about the unusual feelings conjured by watching your home planet disappear as you venture so far into space.

“When you look down at your display, and you see 212,000 miles, and the miles are increasing… your awareness is heightened the whole time,” said Wiseman.

“I was looking at myself — reflecting as well every day — and I was just looking for signs of agitation, or signs of stress, or signs of anxiety or tension,” he said. “One day, we were in the med kit, and we found some medication” for stress and anxiety.

“We were like, well, I just can’t even imagine taking that,” Wiseman said.

But mental health challenges were an indelible part of the experience, Glover noted.

“It is so important,” he said. “We have a team of operational psychologists and psychiatrists that help us skill up to be ready to accomplish things like this, and so we did not just do that on our own.”

‘The closest four humans can be’

Glover, Koch, Hansen and Wiseman captured striking images of the moon during their seven-hour flyby of the lunar surface, which occurred on the sixth day of their mission.