Featured Image Credit: Bill Ingalls/NASA/Getty Images
There is always speculation surrounding the financial compensation for astronauts who have been to space, but you might yet be shocked at the exactly amount that each of the Artemis 2 crew members will receive following their historic lunar mission.
Most people dream of becoming an astronaut when they're a child, as the thought of venturing into space and stepping foot on the Moon is hard to ignore when the whole world is ahead of you.
While the latter has been an unrealistic, if not impossible prospect for over half a century thanks to a number of 'embarrassing' reasons, it's now finally back on the cards following the success of NASA's Artemis 2 mission.
Launching last Wednesday, April 1, Artemis 2 saw a crew of four astronauts travel around the Moon's orbit, getting a glimpse of its dark side and breaking the record for the furthest distance traveled in human history.
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With the mission now set to end with a splash down in San Diego later this evening, many expect that the astronauts would each have earned a lot of money for their time in space, but the reality is a little more disappointing.
As reported by Fortune, the astronauts on board the Orion spacecraft will likely receive no additional financial compensation for their time in space, adding nothing on top of a wage that sits no higher than around $152,000.
This is the exact same for all astronauts in the United States, as you might have learned when the financial package two stranded astronauts received was revealed last year.
Astronauts do get given a small daily stipend for their time in space, but this amounts to little more than $5 — taking their total 'extra' earnings to just $50 per astronaut for the entire 10-day trip.
One NASA astronaut likened this stipend to the extra money you'd receive from a regular job in the event of traveling to a conference, although heading into space is probably a little bit more exciting than what most people would experience in a equivalent scenario.
Part of this is likely born from the status of NASA as a government agency as opposed to a private company, as there's already an extreme disparity in pay between NASA and something like SpaceX for internship programs.
For most astronauts, however, it doesn't really matter as the opportunity to go into space significantly outweighs any financial compensation they might receive — and most, if not all, would probably do it for free if they were asked.
