By Sumayya
NASA space traveler Reid Wiseman has admitted that he was worried his team might not make it back to Earth after their spacecraft went further than planned on the historic Artemis II trip around the moon.
The 50-year-old space traveler remembered the scary moment while talking at the Starmus Festival in Tenerife, Spain, where the team was praised for its help with space discovery. NASA’s mission control center had told the space travelers that they would be up to a maximum distance of 219,667 nautical miles away from Earth. As the spacecraft got close to that specific number, he was watching the distance tracker, expecting the numbers to start going down as they turned back toward home.
However, there was one weird thing that happened. The screen numbers kept growing, going up to 219,668 and 219,669 nautical miles. Wiseman shared that he started to fear that the spacecraft had gone too far and might never make it back home. After three more minutes passed, he could see the screen numbers finally start to go down, showing that the crew was at last heading back to Earth.
But was there really a true danger that the space travelers would get lost in space? There was no sign that anything was broken with the spacecraft, or that it missed its planned path. NASA later proved that the furthest distance from Earth made by Artemis II was a new all-time record of 252,756 miles.
The space trip, which started on April 1, 2026, carried Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian space traveler Jeremy Hansen around the moon. The four space travelers landed safely on April 10 after spending almost 10 days in space. Wiseman also described feeling what he called “Earthsickness,” which is a very strong, heavy feeling of wanting to go home after seeing Earth look like a tiny dot surrounded by complete darkness.
