Artemis mission photographs showed the far side of the moon with Earth in the background. They looked like a science fiction film. The astronauts said exactly that. A neuroscientist had the livestream running for ten straight days and barely slept and would do it again without hesitation.

What is it like to watch four people crammed into a small capsule for ten days come out the other side still laughing? The recovery teams could not get to them for over an hour because the radio failed at splashdown. They waited. When the hatch opened the reaction was jokes. Before that, somewhere near the moon, Reed Weissman proposed naming a crater after his late wife Carol. The crew stopped. Had a moment of silence. Hugged. Then went back to the biggest science day of the mission.

These are scientists. That part matters more than the altitude records.

Topics: Artemis mission, astronaut resilience, Orion spacecraft, Jeremy Hansen, space human moments

GUEST: Dr. Samantha Yammine | @‌science.sam | http://samanthayammine.com

Originally aired on 2026-04-15