A Joyous Return to Earth
NC State alumna and NASA astronaut Christina Koch and her three crewmates splashed down Friday evening after a 10-day trip around the moon.
Sadie jumped for joy for the world, as seen on Instagram.
The brown, tail-wagging dog raced back and forth joyously as her adoptive mom, NASA astronaut Christina Koch, returned home from her record-breaking lunar flyby aboard NASA’s Artemis II.
The little pooch probably had no idea that Koch, the three-time NC State graduate and celebrated mission specialist, had traveled 695,000 miles during her 10-day trip around the moon.
Likely as not, she thought Koch had walked out to the mailbox for a delivery of treats.
The unbridled emotions, however, were shared by the global community as the four-person crew — Koch, commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and fellow mission specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency — splashed down flawlessly at 8:07:27 p.m. off the coast of San Diego and were picked up by a U.S. Navy recovery crew.
“What a journey. We are stable. Four green crewmembers,” Wiseman said.
They weren’t inexperienced. Nor were they seasick. It was NASA’s way of saying the high-flying quartet were safe and sound after making humanity’s first trip to the far side of the moon in more than half a century.
Koch emerged from the Integrity capsule both smiling and fighting back tears. All four astronauts were then whisked onto the amphibious transport dock ship U.S.S. John P. Murtha to begin their final journey back to Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“I know I haven’t learned everything that this journey has yet to teach me,” she said after splashdown. “But there’s one new thing I know, and that is, planet Earth: You are a crew.”
It was a message the accomplished member of the Wolfpack shared multiple times during her 328.5-day stay on the International Space Station and since she was selected to be part of the Artemis II mission three years ago.
“A crew is a group that is in it all the time, no matter what, that is stroking together every minute with the same purpose, that is willing to sacrifice silently for each other, that gives grace, that holds accountable,” Koch said. “A crew has the same cares and the same needs, and a crew is inescapably, beautifully, dutifully linked.”
Sounds an awful lot like a Pack.
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