“It is our strong hope that this mission is the start of an era where everyone, every person on earth, can look at the moon and think of it as also a destination.” “We can safely say, the crew’s ready, the rocket’s ready, the spaceship’s ready. The one thing we are watching is the weather.” “One of the things that the future Artemis missions are going to do is actually to work on the surface of the moon. And even though this mission is not going to the surface, we are starting some of the processes that we think are going to help them be successful.” “I love that, but I also hope we are pushing the other direction — that one day we don’t have to talk about these firsts. It’s about human history. It’s the story of humanity, not Black history, not women’s history, but that it becomes human history.”

Source: New York Times March 30, 2026 11:07 UTC