Astronauts are so funny man. Here's just a couple of things I've found hilarious from this past week of space stuff:
It's probably already been spread around here enough already, but in case anyone's missed it; 7 hours after launch, commander Reid Wiseman, dealing with tech issues, uttered the generational quote "I have two Microsoft Outlooks and neither one of those are working."
After fixing the issues that were afflicting the onboard toilet, mission specialist Christina Koch (who has quickly become my favourite of the four) laughingly said “I’m the space plumber, I’m proud to call myself the space plumber.”
On Easter Sunday, the Artemis II crew hosted a makeshift egg hunt, by hiding packets of dehydrated scrambled eggs around their Orion capsule.
The way the crew always makes sure to make it very clear they're in space when doing interviews. From stuff like Wiseman just hanging out floating sideways on screen or Koch letting her hair loose so it can freely span out flowing around her.
While in transit, the crew decided to record a parody of those bad 80s sitcom intros where everyone turns and smiles at the camera.
When the crew reached the furthest point from Earth in the mission, they jokingly clambored over each other in an effort to get to the far side of the capsule, so that they could individually claim to be the furthest person from earth.
At the same time, on the ISS which was at the time on the other side of earth, the 7 astronauts onboard had a light-hearted race to the far side of the station, making jokes about being the furthest humans from Artemis.
On the way back to earth, NASA actually managed to establish an audio call between the crews of the ISS and Artemis II (where they shared the above info), and Koch called one member of the ISS crew, Jessica Meir, her "astro-sister" as the two of them previously spacewalker together in 2019. Meir then responded I'm so happy that we are back in space together, even if we are a few miles apart" (a few here being 230,000).
While Jeremy Hansen was doing an interview, Wiseman and Koch were just in the background swatting the mission mascot (a little moon plush toy named Rise) back and forth between each other.
During the call with the ISS the Artemis crew asked the ISS crew what they were eating so they could prepare the same food and "share" the meal with them. So both crews had spicy green beans and mango salad.
I don't know why this particular event has struck me as much as it has. It's an almost childlike gesture but I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. I just love the desire to invoke the sensation of sitting down together and share a meal even though they're 200,000 miles apart (on Earth the furthest apart you can possibly be from another person is just under 13,000miles btw).
I’ve also really enjoyed all their playful exchanges with Mission Control!
All of the times CAPCOM (the capsule communicator aka the person interfacing directly with the crew) said “Copy x” with x being something sweet/funny (copy moon joy, copy heart, copy bracelet, etc)
At the end of the crew’s days, they realized they kept saying goodnight but then having to call back afterward, which led to an ongoing bit one evening where the crew or CAPCOM would be like “good night! for now…” or “good night until 5 minutes from now:)”
Reid asking CAPCOM to include a request for about 20 more superlatives into the mission report, so he had new words with which to describe the moon the next day
“AMAZE AMAZE AMAZE” :’)
This one wasn’t playful, but. the choked-up CAPCOM response to Christina’s message on re-establishing comms after the lunar flyby, “Integrity, from Earth - our single system, fragile and interconnected - we copy. Those of us that can, are looking back.”













