NASA's Artemis II moon mission crew spoke briefly with the astronauts living and working on the International Space Station on Tuesday afternoon, the first call of its kind in the history of spaceflight.
At around 2:40 p.m. New York time, the two crews connected during an audio call and spoke about what it was like for the Artemis crew to launch and then fly around the moon. Christina Koch of the Artemis II crew said the training she got from living on the ISS applied to their current mission.
"Basically every single thing that we learned on ISS is up here," Koch said to the space station crew. "Of course, there's the funny and practical: how to eat, how to do silly things with water, how to flip around. We're bringing that with us, too."
There are currently seven astronauts on board the International Space Station: three NASA astronauts, three Russian cosmonauts and a French astronaut from the European Space Agency. NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, the commander of SpaceX's Crew-12 mission docked at the station, is a close friend of Koch and the pair famously conducted the first all-women spacewalk together in 2019.
"Jessica, I always hoped we would be in space again together, but I never thought it would be like this," Koch said. "It's amazing. Congratulations to you on being commander, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your trip in space."
Meir returned the sentiment. "I'm so happy that we are back in space together, even if we are a few miles apart," she joked.
The four astronauts of NASA's Artemis II crew are now on their way back to Earth after swinging behind the far side of the moon on Monday, getting as close as roughly 4,070 miles (6,550 kilometers) of the lunar surface.
A few hours before their flyby, the crew broke the record for traveling the farthest distance any humans have gone into space, and at one point reached a maximum distance of roughly 252,760 miles from Earth.
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