(CNN) — The four Artemis II astronauts, fresh off a bold and risky mission that captured the hearts of a world in tumult, are taking questions Thursday for the first time since their return.
NASA is livestreaming their news conference appearance, beginning at 2:30 p.m. ET, on the space agency’s YouTube channel.
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 to 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.
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.
Already taking pop culture by storm, their journey and unprecedented glimpse of the moon’s far side was as captivating to the public as it was valuable for science, according to NASA.
After years of training together and more than a week spent in space, the astronauts describe their relationship as more than crewmates. They are brothers and sisters, they have said, forever bonded by the trials and triumphs of their adventure — which included living in tight quarters aboard their 16.5-foot-wide Orion spacecraft, grappling with a broken toilet, and experiencing what it’s like to glance back at Earth from the lonely confines of a spacecraft devoid of radio communications more than a quarter million miles away.
“That’s the closest four humans can be and not be a family,” Wiseman said Thursday during opening remarks.
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