Moon Joy
How the Artemis II mission healed a generation
There are moments when we can recall exactly where we were when a pivotal moment in history happened. The assassination of JFK. 9/11. The Challenger explosion. I was in 12th-grade Health class.
On April 1, 2026, four astronauts, Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Mission Specialist (from Canadian Space Agency) Jeremy Hansen, launched into space on a 10-day mission to do a lunar flyby to capture images of the far side of the moon.
This mission is historic because it’s the first time in 54 years that a spacecraft has been launched to the moon, and this crew will go farther than any other crew has gone into space.
The Space Shuttle Challenger launched on a special mission because it was the first time a teacher would go into space. Christa McAuliffe, a Social Studies teacher from Concord, NH, was selected for the Teacher in Space Project. The excitement for this was through the roof. Gen X was going to have a teacher teaching us lessons from space!
The morning of January 28, 1986, people across the country gathered around televisions to witness the historic event. Class curriculum halted in schools so students and teachers could share in this amazing moment. Then the unthinkable happened.
I remember the moment the shuttle exploded: there was a collective gasp, then, before our class could truly react, a teacher from the next classroom burst in, screaming and crying, “The shuttle blew up!” Then, teachers and students poured out of their classrooms and into the center common area on the first floor, where a television was set up. We all watched in utter disbelief.
Forty years later, while watching the Orion spacecraft Integrity launch into space, Gen X relived trauma we didn’t realize was still there. Online, so many of us were saying things like:
Did you all hold your breath during the launch?
Could you guys watch? I couldn’t.
How’s Gen X doing right now?
I watched through my fingers praying the entire time.
I couldn’t bring myself to watch. The shallowed breathing, burning in my chest, and churning in my stomach reminded me that I never healed from that tragedy so long ago, and neither have a lot of other people.
As the Artemis II mission progressed, NASA shared so many amazing videos of the crew, teaching us about the current mission, introducing Rise, a zero-gravity indicator created by 8-year-old Lucas Ye, and how they lived in such close quarters and gave interviews to kids, news outlets, and leadership. Shout-out to them for how they handled that ONE interview. 😏
The crew shared breathtaking pictures of the moon and the Earth, images no human has ever seen. We got to see funny videos like a jar of Nutella floating past Christina Koch (her curls floating in space is simply magical!), Victor Glover randomly spinning in the capsule, and Prime Minister Mark Carney asking Jeremy Hansen if the crew prefers maple syrup over Nutella on their pancakes.
There were also heartwarming moments, such as Victor Glover giving us words of encouragement and telling us he loves us from the moon. Christina Koch saying, even though work on the moon will continue, “We will always choose Earth; we will always choose each other.” And Jeremy Hansen announced the naming of a crater on the moon after Reid Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll, who died of cancer in 2020. The hug and tears they shared afterward were a show of humanity we’d been needing and hadn’t seen in the past 10 years
The past week has been a virtual healing session for Gen X. We gathered online to listen to Mission Control communicate with the crew, hear their wake-up songs, laugh at all their funny floating antics, and cry at seeing humans love and work together for the good of this planet.
Gen X has been captivated by our astronauts over the past week, watching and learning like kids in a classroom. We remember that Christa McAuliffe was supposed to teach us lessons from space. I think we finally got it. ❤️🚀
