Artemis II Astronauts Share Splashdown Thrills and Peanut M&Ms in Town Hall

We welcome you to a special edition of CBS Mornings. I'm Gail King with Tony D. Copelo. You came back to us. Excited about that. We're going to celebrate some real life heroes this morning right here in the studio. Gail, I can't wait. The Artemis 2 astronauts have done something only a handful of people have done in all of human history. And guess what? We get to talk to them about it. I'm so psyched. You ready, Tom? I am ready. The question is, are you ready? That's how I feel, too. Yes. It's like what they said. Our special editions of CBS Morning starts right now.

Booster ignition and liftoff. The crew of Artemis 2 now bound for the moon. Humanity's next great voyage begins. This wall of sound comes at you and then the building starts to rattle. It was the coolest thing I've seen ever. A new milestone in space exploration for astronauts have gone further from Earth than any human has gone before. We're a bunch of little kids up here. Just we cannot get enough of this. I love the new phrase, guys. Moon joy. I feel that.

Yeah. I got tearing. Yes. Splashdown confirmed. A new chapter of the exploration of our celestial neighbor is complete. I could get used to this. I could too. I could get used to this, too. Welcome. Welcome to a very special edition of CBS Mornings. We've never done this before. Why? Because it's never been done before. We're calling Artemis 2 a celebration of heroes. Heroes is a word. It's part of our CBS News series, Things That Matter, brought to you by Bank of America. And as you can see in here, we have a

live audience here in studio made up of mostly elementary, middle, and high school students. They're all inspired, as we were, by the 10-day journey. Are you guys excited? That's a yes. Yes. And are you ready to talk to the astronauts? Breaking news. The astronauts will be here to talk to them. Without further ado, let's get this party started. A warm welcome for Commander Reed Weissman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Cook, and Jeremy Hansen. Let's bring them all out. Welcome. Great to see you in person. Thank you. Welcome, Christina. So great to see you in person.

Congratulations. So nice to see you in person. So nice to see you on Earth, guys. It's an amazing thing. It's good to be on Earth. I know. Let's have a seat. I know. What's it like everywhere you go? I know. I have to say I don't think applause will ever get old for you guys. What's it like? Heartwarming, I guess. It's been amazing. Uh we can still we can take off the blue flight suit and go incognito. We can make it to the grocery store. Uh and then we can do celebrations like this. When you guys came back,

did it feel a little wobbly back on Earth? Did it take a nancond, a minute to adjust a little bit? Yeah, we've seen that video, Christine, of you kind of relearning gravity. Absolutely. Yeah, your body isn't quite used to orienting um the way it usually does because it got used to orienting without gravity. So, it takes us a little while to get used to walking again and get our balance, but it wasn't too bad this time. We were only away for nine days. Everyone in the audience here is taking in the perspective just being in the room with you guys. You were way out of the room. You were way on out there and it gave you a new perspective. Reed, can

you talk a little bit about that? Oh, I'm looking around at these pictures. I remember Christina taking that photo that's back there. Uh we had uh GoPros on our solar arrays that could take pictures of our spacecraft and the moon. Uh there's the sun behind the moon, the eclipsed moon. It is it's it's spectacular. We were but when we came in for entry coming back to Earth, we're doing six miles every second. Six miles a second and it still took us four days to get out to the moon and four days to get back. So the scale is just absolutely unbelievable. I was just reading if you took every planet in our solar system and just put them edge to edge,

it still doesn't fill up the whole space from the Earth to the moon. Like that's how far away the moon is. It's really far away. I know. I bet you don't think about the moon the same. You know, you walk outside and you look up, you look at you go, I've been there. I've seen it. But this is what I was fascinated about when we're sitting. We were all before you came in. We were all saying our hearts were in our throats as you were lifting up and as you were coming down. I want to know, Victor,

start us off with this that when it goes three, two, one, blast off. What are you thinking in that moment? Are you praying? Are you thinking about family? Are you like, let's go? What are you thinking? The praying and thinking about family happened uh earlier. And at that point, we're focused. You know, we're watching systems and making sure things are ready. But you also want to be prepared in case the weather is bad or there's a technical malfunction and you're not going to go that day. And so actually 6 seconds prior when they said six, yes, the core stage engines light and it starts to rumble and it's like, oh, we might really go.

And then at liftoff, those solids light and there is no question we were going somewhere. And for a split second, I was like, oh, am I really ready? He was 100% ready. That was part of the fun of watching you guys. And when you came back, Jeremy, cuz as I'm watching it, it was falling so fast. Well, Gail, he referred to it as a sporty experience. A Tell us when you were coming back, was it more nerve-wracking going up or coming back down? Oh, well, it's it's really from launch till landing, but it doesn't end until those shoots come out. But for the landing, it's like all the sights, all the feels. It's like the best roller

coaster ride you've ever been on. The first thing you see is like plasma, the color starting to show up. You this fireball building outside the windows. It was red and it was coming down and then it was like blue and green. It was like somebody was welding like flashing. It was so bright I put my dark visor down like my sunglasses on. And then when the drugs come out, you're like getting thrashed around and you're pushed into the seat with the G forces. It's just all really exhilarating. And then the drugs cut and you're falling again and then the mains come out and then uh then Christina and I did one of these when the three

three good mains. Christina, what was it like when you splash down uh you know you're back on Earth. Uh you're safe. Uh but then there's a little delay uh before they can open the hatch. When that hatch opens and you get your first breath of earth air again. What's that like? It was phenomenal. I was completely overcome with just elation. I was overjoyed. I yelled. I seeing the other people and them coming in was just phenomenal. Then we got to go up on a hoist and a into a helicopter. And so the ride just never stopped. Um the gentleman from the Navy that brought me up in the helicopter, he was very nervous. he had been, you know, dropped into our raft and I could tell he was just really nervous and I looked at him. I tapped him on the back when

he we were connected together, threw him a smile, and then from then on, we just had a great time. I know. Wait, I have to sell her out for just a second. So, when we landed, we splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. We're waiting for the rescue forces to come open the hatch and Christina out of her space suit pocket goes, "I got some peanut M&M's. Anybody want some?" And so, we're leaning back against the side of the spacecraft. We just come back from the moon. We're just eating peanut. We were happy. have to say astronauts, they're just like us. We have much more coming up for you. Apollo 13 director, Ron Howard's coming. He wanted to be here today. Our CBS Morning Special

Edition continues in just a moment. We'll be right back. This portion of CBS Mornings is brought to you by Bank of America. We welcome you back to our special edition of CBS Mornings with the astronauts of Artemis 2. You could call them the core 4. Let's bring in the students who have come up with their own questions for the crew. Nate, can you start us off? That's right. All right. So, I have Lizzy with a question. Here you go. Hi. So, my question is how does teamwork play a role in the success of a mission like Artemis 2?

Ah, great. Good question. Well, I would say that teamwork is the epitome of what we do, not only in human space flight, but probably every endeavor that you take on. And the walls here say a celebration of heroes. And I want to be clear, that is not us four. That is the people on the ground that have been working on this mission for 20 years plus. That is you all that followed this mission and supported it. That is our teammates in mission control, the rocket, the launch. Teamwork is 100% everything. We learned when we saw the most amazing things in the universe, they humbled us. They made us realize that we are nothing without each other.

Yes. Beautiful. You're nothing. All right. Our next question is from Countis, who's right here, and she's a triplet. Her two sisters are also here. Countest, your question for the astronauts. Thank you. So, my question is, if every student on Earth could experience just one moment from your Artemis 2 mission, which moment would you choose? Good question. Wow. I'm so glad I took the first question. You know, there are so many different moments and I mean we were like wow o over and over again and it just kept getting better and then you come home in a fireball. So like all of

it really the whole thing together is a unique experience. But the moment that the engines cut off when the rocket stops pushing you which you're feeling the push like you're on gravity into your seat and then the engines cut off and you feel like you're floating for the first time. That is a very special moment and I would love it if more people could experience that. It's cool. But as I was talking I realized actually the feelings are great but the view I actually I changed my mind. The view if you could see all of Earth in one glance.

Yes. That is a very special perspective. Yeah. Earth is so small. Nate. All right. Uh Levi has a question. Here you go. Hi. My question is what is your favorite thing about gravity that you missed while you were up there? Oo things down. You want to take it, Jeremy? Yeah, sure. Um, really, uh, nothing. I, uh, I just had the most amazing time in microgravity and, uh, we were all talking about, hey, maybe we could just do one more lap around the moon before we go home. We were not ready to go home. Like you, if you get the chance to experience microgravity, you just have to do it. It's so much fun. And yes, things are a little harder, like all the little life chores, you know, going to

the washroom and taking care of your body, all that stuff's a little harder in microgravity, but it is just so worth it. You should try it. Hey, you got another one? Uh, Pia has a question. Hi. My question is, what's the toughest decision you had to make in space on the mission? These are good questions from toughest decision. And now I think it's my turn to answer. I actually to not do the second memorized response. I think that was that's a good one. All right, I will use that. So, in the middle in the middle, this is the first

time humans had flown the spaceship. So, we were testing out everything. I we were really testing out everything. And one of the things that we didn't know we were testing out was our caution and warning system. So in the middle of the night uh we had a warning come on that was a very it was a very uh dramatic and important warning which kind of gave us indications that fuel was leaking out of our spacecraft. It was called a runbox warning and we have procedures that we must execute and we must execute them right now. So imagine all four of us are asleep. We're floating in our sleeping bags and we get this alarm and I wake up and I'm

looking at the display and I'm I'm like I think that's a runbox warning and all of a sudden that got everyone's attention immediately and Jeremy was asleep in front of the control system and he woke up came underneath the controls to my left and he's like we need to be executing the boldface emergency response right now. So he started to configure the propellant system for shutting down the fuel system so we could preserve the fuel that we had in the spacecraft. And as we were watching these, this warning was coming and going and coming and going, which is unusual. Normally, you would get this thing and it would just stay lit the whole time. Uh, and we talked through this very rapidly and we decided that we

would hold and not execute these procedures cuz if we did it, it would shut down our entire fuel cell. Oh my god. Re that sounds very scary, guys. We didn't do it. We've got director Ron Howard here in a moment. I think he's going to make a movie out of that particular moment. We got much more ahead. Not only that, this special edition of CBS Mornings, including an aspiring astronaut who captured all our hearts at launch, Captain Jack. There he is. You're not going to want to miss this. Stay with us. Artemis 2. A celebration of heroes continues in a moment. and the Artemis 2 launched into space. But someone else caught our eye during

the coverage. 5-year-old aspiring astronaut Jack and his parents traveled to Florida so they could watch the historic launch in person. Rob Marciano met with him that day and gave him the nickname Commander Jack. I'm so obsessed with space. So, I'll see Orion launch from ground to sky. So, it'll be totally exciting. And our little buddy, Commander Jack, is with us right now. What's up? How are you doing? You doing good? Good. How was it in Florida watching that launch in person? Um it was fun. It was really special, right?

Yeah. Well, you know what? Speaking of special, we might have a special surprise for you a little bit later. Are you going to stick around? Yeah. Okay, cool. All right, Jack, stay with us. And you stay with us as well. We have something special planned for everyone later in the show, especially for my guy, Commander Jack. Welcome home, Integrity. Taking humanity back to the moon, going further, and returning safely to Earth. My first question happens to be the same as one of our younger viewers.

What is your favorite thing you saw on the moon? My brain could not process what I was looking at out the window. The entire moon in a dark matte black sphere. Even while we're not up there in space, the mission continues. We can't wait to hand off those batons. There's one new thing I know and that is planet Earth. You are a crew. Goosebumps. I can't get enough. We welcome you back to our special edition of CBS Mornings. We're calling it Artemis 2, a celebration of heroes. I can't explain to you guys how excited we've been about this. All week planning, getting the studio ready. We kept saying our countdown. 3 2 1.

They're going to be here Fridays today. It's part of our series, Things That Matter, we call it. Brought to you by Bank of America. We are so excited to have I'm going to call them the core four, the crew members of the historic mission right here in our studio. So, we've been talking to Commander Reed Weissman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialists Christina Cook and Jeremy Hansen. We've been talking to them. But what's really cool about today is we're not alone. We've got a whole audience here of high school students, middle school students, some elementary school students. You having fun out there, GUYS?

They're really great. They're staying in it, man. More than 50 years before Artemis, the three member crew of Apollo 13 were the humans who had traveled the farthest from Earth. The dramatic true story of their aborted 1970 lunar mission was shown in the Academy Awardwinning movie. It's called Apollo 13. You guys heard of The man who brought us that film is a champion of all things space. Let's bring him out now. Give a very warm welcome to the director. Come on out, Ron Howard. Wow. Amazing. Shake your hands. Pleasure to meet you. Hey, really great to have you. We were so glad you're here. We're so happy that you're here cuz I asked him, had they seen Apollo 13? Guess what?

They've all seen it only about 100 times. I know you and Cheryl were watching when they lifted off. What were you thinking as you watched it take off? Well, I was it was there was a duality because I was also uh you know sort of rec recalling the work that we put in to try to capture that moment. But soon that fell away and I was just a fan and you know and rooting for you guys and of course I'm such a believer in space exploration and you know and what you accomplished was extraordinary and uh and of course then baited breath.

Yes. uh on the return. Uh and so by then I wasn't thinking about movies or anything else, just getting you guys home. Thank you. And they took that free trip around the moon where they come back with no thrusters, right? Uh did they get the science right? That was also part of Apollo 13. I had forgotten the science. You know, I cram for these things when I do the movies, but I but it uh it was, you know, it was really remarkable. And I was also very moved uh because they they played you Jim Levelvel a message from the late great Jim Levelvel, the commander of Apollo 13, of course, taped a message for them saying, "Hey, welcome to my old neighborhood."

Wow. What did the movie mean to you guys? Because I know you've all watched it. What were you thinking? Yeah. Oh, so many times that movie has uh guided me. Just like one antidote, getting ready for astronaut section. I had already seen it a bunch of times, but like that's one of the things I did before I went to the interviews to be selected as an astronaut just to kind of immerse myself back in that culture that we, you know, won't fail. And uh one of the things I often try to explain people that mo that movie and that failure is not an option is a lot of people misunderstand. It's not that we never fail. It's that we don't stop there.

Like all of you, you are going to fail. I guarantee you we fail over and over again, but we don't stop when we fail. And as a team, that's our that's what brings us together is like, hey, we will get through this together. We'll lean in and get this done. And that Yes. Uh speaking of uh of together, uh Vlad is here somewhere with a super fan of sorts. Yes. No, I'm the super fan, Tony. Oh, yeah. Tap me in. Woo. Here we go. Ron, good to see you, my friend. What's going on? So, one of the things that I thought was really remarkable for Apollo 13, you actually went through some of the training that the astronauts did. And at

one point you promised Kevin Bacon, who played Jack Swagger, 10 close-ups if he kept his mouth shut about something. Oh. Oh no. Oh my lord. Wow. That's a deep pole. That's a deep one. Uh well, we had to do Air Force training because we were going to shoot on the vomit comet, the KC135 that you guys probably didn't used have to do, but the they used to use it to train by flying parabas uh in the sky and then creating weightlessness basically. So we bolt we're going to bolt our sets down uh and film the actors weightless which is the way they used to practice EVAs getting out and so

forth in the Jimny era and later but you had to do flight training uh parabolic chambers and all this sort of thing including a physical and this is the embarrassing part. I have vazov veagal which means you can faint and when they take your blood sometimes that happens you just pass out. Well, I also was supposed to give a urine sample and so my bladder was full. You see where this is going? Uh, I fainted. Kevin Bacon happened to be in the room. I let go. Suddenly, I wake up and my pants are wet. Kevin looks at me and I said, "You get 10 extra close-ups this movie if you keep your mouth shut." Which he which

Were YOU ON OUR CREW? DID that happen? Let's just say, you know, with the with the toilet actually didn't fail. It was the this the venting system that emptied the tank with the challenges that we had. We were constantly thinking about the constellation Uranus. Oh yeah. Guys, do astronauts ever get air sick? Do you? Oh, absolutely you do. We're all human. Space motion sickness is very rare. Okay. Ron, what question do you have for the astronauts? Well, I would, you know, uh, the you spent many, many hours, days, weeks, months, uh, in, you know, in space at the ISS, the three of you. I

know spent a lot of time. Uh, and Jeremy, your first time, but I was curious, you know, it's not like the space program has stopped. There's been a lot, you know, tremendous ongoing effort for decades. So I was curious how different the experience of going to the moon and making that mission work compared to your other longer stays at ISS. You want to take it Christina? So many ways I think the training was different. I think the main difference was we were doing this for the first time whereas the ISS we've had people in space for 25 years straight. Your entire life not every human has been on the planet. And so they've got that figured out in so many ways. are still

innovating and doing amazing science all the time, but we had to figure it out as we went. We got to work handinhand with the engineers. We weren't just getting trained. We were actually a part of the team. And that continued right through the whole thing. I mean, the views were different, of course, and space was different, but honestly, that aspect of it to me was the most significant. Was the intensity of the journey and the experience different? I definitely thought it was more intense when you're on the International Space Station. Well, you do you know that we called them from on flight day seven. Uh we had a link up

with the International Space Station. It was one of our favorite days. And the best part about that whole call was we were all eating the same food. So here we were 100,000 miles. What was the food? What was we had spicy green beans, broccoli graten, we had uh the beef. What's amazing is the food seems to have been very good up there. Uh surprisingly so. Yeah. I've heard that you can't eat bread in space because of the crumbs could get. Is that true? that you're not allowed. But that's what I heard from a science friend of mine. Please stay with us.

Chips. I heard this. Ron, can you stay with us? Absolutely a little bit longer. We've got we've got much more head. We are back. Our very special edition of CBS Mornings live with the astronauts of Artemis 2 and live with a studio audience full of kids with more questions for the crew here. Nate, tossing to you. All right. Uh Vlad, can you uh toss me that microphone right there? It's in front of you, Vlad. Vlad, right there. Toss me that microphone. Thank you, sir. I got hands. You can throw it. Throw them up. I USED TO PLAY FOOTBALL FOR A LIVING.

Used to Simon. But I didn't. We have Simon right here. Here we go. Hi. My name is Simon Yun. And what advice would you give to a graduating high school senior who would love to become an astronaut in the future? Wow. I like that. Uh I we could all we could talk about this forever because we just love this question. But really just find the thing that you love doing it. You know, you it doesn't have to be science. It doesn't have to be engineering. It has to be the thing that you love doing and go out there and give it your all every single day. Jeremy often talks about each one of us has a

gift and to be truly happy, we have to be sharing that gift. So find your gift and share that with the world. All right, Vlad. I'm right here, Gail. Uh, and this is Ian. And check out his shirt, y'all. Sulfur, aluminum, potassium. Ian, you have the next question. Uh, my question is, what is your dream for future space exploration? That's a great question. Victor, anybody? So, one of my dreams for future space exploration is that, you know, not only do we get to the moon and stay sustainably and responsibly, that we get

on to Mars. And so, I hope that by the time you're ready to take a journey like that, that we have done our job to make it safe and repeatable so that you get the chance to go. Would you all go back again? 100%. Victor a little hesitated. You said maybe later. Hey, you got another one? Yeah, I have Bridget, who by extension is part of our CBS family. Bridget, all right, you can stand up. There you go. Hello. My name is Bridget Edin, and my question for the Artemis 2 crew is, what did you do when the toilet broke? Did you just let it fly around?

We didn't, but sometimes it Well, the toilet is a very important piece of equipment, any spaceship. And the We had two different things. At first, the toilet when we first turned it on, the fan that actually keeps everything going where it needs to go didn't quite turn on. So, we tried again. We gave it some time and we got that working. But then you have to get rid of everything that you output. And we do that by venting it into space and that actually clogged up. So, we had a different way of going to the bathroom and we didn't need to. We used a secondary vent. Everything on the spaceship usually has a backup system. So luckily the engineers planned for that and we used our backup system and we got through it. It wasn't as easy as

our fancy good toilet, but we made do. How do you stay clean up there? Do you take showers, bird baths? What do you do? Yeah, pretty much. I love that bird. Bird bath. Yeah, actually I think showers in space are great. Floating water. Yep. I wonder what that's like. Amea, did I Amaya? Amaya. It's Amea. All right, Ameia. So, my question is specifically um for Victor Glover. How um how did it feel to be the first person of color to fly to or around the moon?

You know, good question. Amea, thank you for the question. And I will tell you, one of the things about swinging for the fence and trying to, you know, hit a home run when the game is on the line is if you think about that, that can add pressure and make you not, you know, go up there and play your best game. And so I focused a lot on working with this team and trying to be a good teammate, trying to be a good teammate to them and also receive from them their good teamwork. And I think one of the reasons we were as successful as we did is we spent a lot of time thinking about us and not us me individually. And so I would ask answer this by maybe just making a visual lesson here that I spent a lot of

time thinking about this patch and this patch and not this patch. And now we get to be here and we get to talk about it though. Yes. I love when you Very nice. I love that, Victor. You know, I was surprised that you guys were not aware of all the uh how many people were watching. You didn't even You didn't notice that you weren't aware of how many of us were watching and following every move. They didn't have social media up there. Yeah. You weren't aware. We don't have on the International Space Station, we have satellite connectivity all the time almost, so that you actually have a network up

there. And on our spaceship, we were just so far away. That was much more challenging. We got email up and down once or twice a day. So, we didn't have the ability to stay connected and online. And so, it was only through our family conferences. And my daughters were so excited to tell me about what was happening online. But we had very little, you know, current events uh during the mission. So, what do you make of all of this attention? Now, you walk in THE ROOM, WE GO, WHEN DID YOU really realize that this was a phenomena? Yes. This week? Yeah. this right now. Well, my husband knows that I don't necessarily like attention, so apparently him and my family had a conversation before I got back and they

were like, "Who's going to tell her?" But yeah, it was my husband. He let me in on the secret. Yeah, we're so bad. When you guys did the when you guys were doing a broadcast, did you guys who was the director? Were you? No. It's whoever has the five minute activity before the conference starts of who's going to set it up today. And the best part about this crew is that we shared every responsibility. We were one entity. We shared everything. So whoever had the time, they had the lead. If you watch our press conferences up there, somebody different started them every time. We were in different spots. We just we shared everything.

Did you know we were watching you on the press conferences, but not the rest of the time? Most of the time you didn't know we were watching. Wow. We can't see the audience we're talking to. So we're just talking to the like the Truman Show. Yeah. We're watching. It's like Finding Nemo. We're watching Nate. Yep. I'm right here, Gail. And you know what? Yes, Jack is sitting here with us. And he's our little commander or Commander Jack as we like to call him. And we have something special for you. Uh but I don't want to give it to you right now.

You know what? We'll be back. Stick around. We are back with Jack, our amazing little buddy. Now, we first met you at the Aremis 2 launch. Jack, your enthusiasm for the mission, it just won us over. Uh, but Jack, we heard a little something from your mom that you got your spaceuit a little dirty the other day. So, the Aremis 2 crew, they wanted to surprise you with something. Christina, so, Commander Jack. Oh, first of all, it's great to meet you and thank you for being there at our launch. And I was wondering if you would like to have a spaceuit that matches the one that we wore on Orion. It's orange.

Check it out. And we signed it for Wow. And look, it says commander just like yours. So you can still keep your title. And Christina, it's signed. It is. Each of us sign this. It says NASA. It does. It says NASA just like that one. We would like to have you on our team. What do you think? Thank you, buddy. Well, see, seeing how emotional he is, how does it make you feel? Amazing. We're so incredibly thankful.

Um, Jack has been hugely inspired by this mission and by all of you. So, thank you so much for everything you're doing. Obviously, not just for Jack, but for all of humanity. No, thank you. Awesome. I want one of these. This is so cool. Look at this. Um, before you guys go, I have a couple of science questions. I'm curious. A friend of mine told me that you can't actually burp in space. Is that true? Your body learns. It is hard. It's not like Earth because the air bubbles don't go to the top and the liquid doesn't go to the bottom, but your body slowly will figure it out.

True or false? You get 3% taller in space. Well, for Jeremy, sadly, true. Um, it was a tight The Orion capsule was very tight. You ever wish they had a smaller astronaut as your own? No, we love that, man. I'm just kidding. How does it feel though to be out in the world? Because you were tight for so long and it was such an intimate space. But what we all liked was watching how you all got along so well. That I can't get enough of that and what that meant to all of us. We definitely and you heard it when we came back. Um you know just an opportunity for us to reflect back on all of you and what we sort of realize why it's meaningful for us is that you made a choice. Um you chose joy and positive

things. You know a lot of times we pay attention to the negative but all of you in the world decided and made that choice. Let's pay attention to something creative and positive. We choose joy with Wisman Victor Glover Jeremy. Really? Thank you.