On March 3, NASA announced the crew of the Artemis 2 mission, which will orbit the Moon at the end of 2024. Three astronauts from the American agency and one from the Canadian space agency (CSA) have been selected for the trip. .

While Canadian Astronaut Jeremy Hansen learned he would be on the mission during a phone call with CSA President Lisa Campbell, American NASA crew Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman and Christina Koch received the news in a more unusual way. : with a “false meeting”, marked with a different pretext for each of them separately.

The curious fact was revealed by the website of the The New York Times last Wednesday (5). “It’s a funny story,” said Glover, the lunar mission pilot, “because in one way or another we’re all delayed or lost. [a reunião] somehow”.

NASA Astronaut Office Chief Joseph Acaba had decided weeks before which three candidates would be sent on the trip. He wanted to do something special, it was the first time in over 50 years that humans had gone to the moon.

“You wanted to find a way to bring all these people together in the same room without them knowing what it was about – to make it special for them,” says Acaba.

The head of the astronaut office checked when Glover, Wiseman and Koch would be there that day at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, USA. To prevent the crew from becoming suspicious, the encounter was scheduled with each of them separately.

“Houston we have a problem”

But the surprise came with a few setbacks. For starters, Glover was coming back from lunch and would arrive just in time. “I was like, ‘Hey boss, I’m going to be a few minutes late,'” he recalled. “I texted him [Acaba]”.

Meanwhile, Koch was several miles from the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory training facility, a huge pool where NASA astronauts simulate underwater spacewalks.

The astronaut, who even starred in the first female spacewalk, with Jessica Meir, asked to attend the meeting remotely. “I opened my computer to join the virtual meeting and realized there was no connection,” she said. “So I texted our boss and said, ‘Hey, can we meet virtually? And he said, “No”.

She then rushed to the space center, but ended up being late. Wiseman was in the doctor’s office and just as much racing against time. “Like all good doctor’s appointments, this one was coming to an end,” he said.

Wiseman warned Acho that he would miss the meeting, but the head of the astronaut office informed him that he should join the meeting at least by videoconference. He did not know that he had been chosen as commander of the Artemis 2 mission.

Upon accessing the virtual meeting, Wiseman was confronted by the other astronauts and Norman Knight, NASA’s director of flight operations, who heads Acaba. “I was like, man, this isn’t the meeting I should be missing,” the astronaut said.

The crew initially feared that this was bad news. “We were afraid we weren’t doing well at the time,” Koch said.

Virtually everyone’s delay left tension in the air. “After all the embarrassment,” Glover said, “they asked us how we felt about being the crew of Artemis 2.”

The announcement that they would be going to the moon was very cheerful, although for Wiseman the delays were not “a good start”.

“They were a bit late,” Aqaba noted. “And luckily, I didn’t want to change my mind. [sobre escolhê-los]”.

As the Americans received the surprise encounter, Hansen discovered that he will go to lunar orbit during the phone call, which was also unique. “It was a very special call for me,” said the Canadian. “And then I was allowed to share this with my wife and children, as long as they were sworn to secrecy.”