CAPE CANAVERAL, FL—Twenty-eight astronauts—including two Apollo veterans—and one very large Saturn V shared a room at Kennedy Space Center on Friday night for the Artemis Celebration Gala, held the evening before NASA’s MAX POWER event.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman described the astronauts as “a living connection between those who first taught humanity how to reach another world and those who will learn how to stay there.”
Apollo 16 moonwalker Charlie Duke and Apollo 9 lunar module pilot Rusty Schweickart were the evening’s guests of honor. Organizers also honored Apollo-era engineers in attendance, including JoAnn Morgan, Poppy Northcutt, and Jay Honeycutt.
Apollo 9.0: Schweickart was joined onstage by the Artemis III crew, including backup Bob Hines, who stood in for an absent Andre Douglas. Artemis III’s job closely resembles Apollo 9’s—test a lunar lander in Earth’s orbit so the next crew can trust it at the Moon.
“We checked out just about everything that was possible to check,” said Schweickart, “to make sure that the guys who landed on the Moon on the following flights were going to have a good set of equipment and machines to do the job, and you guys have got the same job.”
Nearly six decades later, the hardware is unrecognizable. Schweickart said his iPhone has “thousands of times greater capability than the computers that we use to fly and land on the Moon.” The audience is bigger, too. “We were not always on television the way you guys are going to be,” he told the crew.
One thing Artemis III won’t repeat is Schweickart’s spacewalk. “I’m sorry you’re not going to go EVA,” he said. “That’s stupid.”
Full circle: The second panel brought Duke onstage alongside Schweickart and members of the Artemis II crew. As Orion carried its crew around the Moon, commander Reid Wiseman reflected on the awe and love he felt during the mission—an experience he realized he shared with the Apollo astronauts only after getting home. “
“When you were out there, it was all the same thing,” he told Duke. “It was hope and joy and peace and unity.”
None of the Artemis II crew plans to fly again. Victor Glover, now an executive advisor to the president of Cal Poly, said he’s focused on whoever flies next. “I talked about stepping out the way and really encouraging the next generation,” he said. “I’ve known I’m in the human development business.”
For Duke, the legacy the next generation must leave is actually staying on the Moon. “It’s just not a rock up there,” he said. “There’s a lot of minerals and a lot of things up there that we can use down here for the benefit of everyone.”
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Canada is ready to give its young launch industry a boost.
The country will upgrade its rockets to medium lift as part of its Launch the North initiative, which is aiming to support sovereign rockets flying from at least two nascent spaceports on Canada’s east coast. The timeline for the upgrade is not clear, however; the smaller rockets are expected to get off the ground in 2028.
Canada’s C$142B ($100B) federal budget five-year-spending projection, released late Thursday, officially put money behind the previously announced rocket spending plans. The budget also promised new rockets, a sovereign “rocket-propulsion ecosystem,” and defense-department backed launch and testing.
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