Featured Image Credit: MIGUEL J. RODRIGUEZ CARRILLO / Contributor via Getty
The human race is getting ready to make one small step for man (one giant leap for mankind) all over again, with NASA heading back to the Moon for the first manned mission since the '70s.
Eugene Cernan was famously the last person to set foot on the Moon, rounding off the Apollo missions with 1972's Apollo 17. Now, Elon Musk's SpaceX is helping NASA put us back there, with the Artemis II mission and the first crewed mission in over four decades.
Following in the footsteps of November 2022's unmanned Artemis I, Artemis II is a four-person flyby of the Moon that will take 10 days in total. We already know that Americans Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch will be joined by Canada's Jeremy Hansen.
There's still no news on the select crew that will have the honor of setting foot on the Moon as part of the Artemis III mission, but in the meantime, the Artemis II team is flying their flags in 2026.
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Speaking to Ars Technica, Hansen confirmed the bizarre act he plans on performing just before he blasts off in the Integrity Orion spacecraft. There's no concrete date for Artemis II's launch, although we know it won't launch before February 5, 2026.
Although we imagine the adrenaline would be pumping ahead of such a historic mission, Hansen said he wants to "take a very short nap on the pad."
He reiterated to the outlet how there's around three hours between the crew getting into the rocket and blastoff: "There’s enough time built in there to have a nap. I’ve been practicing falling asleep. So if the loops are quiet enough, and I get a minute, I’ll try for a nap."
Not everyone is planning on catching 40 winks, with pilot Victor Glover explaining why things will be moving at breakneck speed: "Launch comes after you’ve been awake for seven hours, and your brain is going in a bunch of different places, right?
"And so you've already worked a full day, and then you go do, like, the most energetic thing you've ever done in your life."
As for Hansen, he's the only space virgin on the mission. While the others have all flown on a SpaceX Dragon or Russian Soyuz vehicle, Hansen is worried about being one of the majority of astronauts who have to deal with 'space adaptation syndrome' during their first orbital flight.
Despite there being no way to work out who will be affected, Hansen will still be expected to jump out of his seat and into action: "I'll just be really intentional. I won't move my head around a lot. Obviously, I'm gonna have to get up and move. And I'll just be very intentional in those first few hours while I'm moving around."
They'll all get the odd nap on the way to the Moon, but as Glover reminds us, a gruelling schedule means their first day is packed with activities: "In my brain, until that point, this is all still one long day. So for me, the first real sleep is on the second day."
