Attention on two, three, two. This is the launch director
performing the final poll for launch. Verify no constraints and go for launch. Program chief engineers
have no constraints and are go for launch. I have no constraints
and are go for launch. Weather has no constraints
and weather is go for launch. You are looking at the world's
most powerful rocket. Artemis I embodies the hard
work of thousands across the world determined to explore
for the benefit of all. After years of testing and talking
and testing some more, Artemis I finally carried the dreams and
aspirations of the world back to the moon. I knew this would be an exciting mission. I mean, we haven't left low-Earth orbit
in over 50 years. Nobody on my team had done it. Most of them weren't even alive back
when we did it last. It has been a culmination
of many years of hard work. It certainly represents a lot of that
design and effort that we have put in to build the first human spacecraft
for NASA in over 50 years. It sent a message to the... really to the world, that we have laid the foundation
for a generational rocket. We are not just going to the moon. We're going to prove that we can live
and work on the moon and establish an outpost on the moon for future distant
exploration out to Mars and beyond. I'll never forget
coming in in the afternoon and everything is just working
per the timeline. And you're starting to feel like,
you know, today might be our day. Great news. No constraints to launch. You know, I'm sitting on the console at my station
and things have been pretty quiet. And, you know, you start to get the sense
like this thing's going to go this time. And here we go. In the wee hours of that morning of
November 16th came, it all fell together and the payoff was a launch
that shook you to your foundation and signified
that America was back on the road to the moon. And when that vehicle lifted off the pad. Windows began to shake, and the building announces that that vehicle was flying. I was overwhelmed with joy and excitement, not just so much for me,
but for the entire team, for the country. It was eye watering. And I was tearing up. What an amazing accomplishment
for this team. I'm still shaken a little bit. That never gets old. That is always one of the coolest things
you will ever see in your entire life. It is like, my gosh, this adrenaline rush
just hit you. And I knew this.
This is it. We're it's game time. We were off and running now. For the first time in 50 years. We were breaking out of low-Earth orbit
to head toward the moon. In attitude for solar array deploy. Solar array deploy Initiated. Copy. Flight, MPO solar arrays released. After the vehicle
was put in its preliminary orbit, meaning Orion and the ICPS, we had to wait for trans lunar injection,
and that was a whole different game. Let's go have good burn
and let's go to the moon. Let's do it. Now, if you think about hitting a key
hole in the sky, it was all about that
trans lunar injection burn from the ICPS. Without a perfect burn from the ICPS,
we weren't going to the moon. We certainly weren't going in the right
place. That little RL-10,
the ‘engine that could’, went on and had the longest burn it had ever
had in the history of the RL-10 program, which goes back many, many years. SLS set us up for success. The launch vehicle and the insertion
point was over 99% accurate to where they predicted. Orion is now flying free, attached to the European Service module
and on its journey to the moon. We had video from Orion shortly after the trans
lunar injection burn was complete. Orion flipped around and we took pictures
of the Earth and I had no words. It was just amazing. Amazing. The views of our blue marble
in the blackness of space now capturing the imagination
of a new generation. The Artemis Generation. It was four days to cross the line of demarcation to enter what is called
the lunar sphere of influence. And you could see the earth
beginning to recede. Our first big burn was the outbound powered flyby, which is the one
where we went right by the moon. Orion
was actually on the backside of the moon, so we did not have communications with it. So we had to set
everything up ahead of time. When we lost the signal, we waited. Held our breath sets and prayers. And then sure enough, it came out
from the back side of the moon. And we were on our way to the distant
retrograde orbit. Distant retrograde orbit. We're going to be about 38,000 miles away
from the lunar surface. Artemis I traveled approximately 268,000 statute miles from Earth. One of the really fantastic moments
during the mission was when we saw the first image of the farthest point
that any human spacecraft has gone before. We see these images downloaded real time,
and we would sit in the rooms and we would just pause the meeting,
we'd pause the discussion, go look at that picture. It's almost unreal. They really represented
as if we were there on board the spacecraft, looking at the moon
and looking at the earth, our home. We're continuing to get some spectacular
views from the Orion spacecraft. Orion now has its sights set on home. NASA's newest moon Explorer, now less than 2 hours away
to complete its shakedown mission. When you hit the earth's atmosphere,
entry interface, we did what we call a skip entry, where Orion bore down
into the atmosphere for a period of time. Then it popped out and then it skipped
upwards of was thousands of miles. And if you don't come back
into the atmosphere with accuracy, you will skip out of the Earth's orbit
and not be able to return. And we did that intentionally because we wanted then to come back down
to do a second heating cycle. And we're coming back into the atmosphere, basically a double
heating to really stress the heat shield. It's hard not to hold your breath
when all of that is happening because I'm thinking to myself,
if this doesn't go well, what do I do? What do I have? That was the major objective of Artemis I. We had to prove that that heat
shield would be rock solid to sustain a crew, because if you don't
ablate the heat, you're done. And there it is. High over the Pacific, America's
new ticket to ride to the moon and beyond now in view. Finally, on reentry. That was a culmination of that
25 day mission that we waited with bated breath
to make sure our baby came home. Splashdown, Orion. Back on Earth. And when it hits the water,
everyone just goes. It's just a rush to get to the capsule
as quickly as we can. And so the teams,
they feel the sense of urgency. The small boats move, the helicopters
move. We’re taking imagery from the air. We handle the recovery capsule
like it was a fragile egg. We wanted to make sure that the heat
shield got all the data that they needed, that everything,
all the mechanisms were preserved. From Tranquility Base to Taurus-littrow
to the tranquil waters of the Pacific, the latest chapter of NASA's
journey to the moon comes to a close. You could sense a sigh of relief
in the flight control room in Houston, knowing that our job was complete. We had brought Orion home
successfully and set the stage for grander things to come in the future. It was a testament to the hardware, but it was a testament to the teams, all the teams that had a hand
in bringing that hardware together. We learned so much about how this vehicle
is going to operate and we proved
that is ready to put humans on board. For Orion and for Artemis, this is just the starting point. Next thing is getting ready to fly
the crew on Artemis II. Ladies and gentlemen, your Artemis
II crew. So waiting in the wings... Artemis II. And now the humans are getting on board. Thank you to the NASA workforce. Thank you to our industry partners, everyone in Europe
that's working for this. America has made a very deliberate choice
over decades to curate a global team. And we are going to the moon together. We need to celebrate this moment
in human history. It is the next step on the journey
that gets humanity to Mars. Am I excited? Absolutely. Whoa. Initial reaction to that news
was just intensity. Finding out was a humbling experience
for me. Shocking is the best word I can say. Disbelief. An immense sense of honor
and responsibility. Putting the first four crewmembers
on Orion is what I'm so excited about. I want to hear the stories
about what it is like to live in the Orion spacecraft. We're going to test out the vehicle's
ability to conduct rendezvous maneuvers, crews ability
to actually fly Orion manually. And most importantly, we're going to test
the environmental control system. We got humans on board.
We got to keep them safe. We got to keep them breathing. And then we're going to have them
come back at that high speed entry of 32 times the speed of sound to make sure that they can survive
this for future missions. It's very exciting to fly crew,
but it's also daunting, right, because these are people and they're
putting their lives in our hands. This one needs to perform and will perform as good or better than the first one did. And so we have new launch commit criteria. We have changes to our procedures, changes
to our timelines. We have new systems for crew,
we have new systems in the capsule. We have an emergency egress system,
we have new recovery systems. We want to make sure that we've gone
through those time and time again. So that when launch day rolls around, we're ready for anything
that the hardware may throw at us. By building
incrementally these capabilities, and proving these capabilities
that we have through the Artemis campaign, we will be able to live on the moon
and be able to perform science that is very important for deep space
exploration. I'm ready for Artemis II. The SLS team is ready for Artemis II! We are ready for Artemis II. We are ready. We are ready. All right, I'm ready, Let's go!
