Astronauts Were All Late to NASA Meeting to Reveal Moon Mission Crew
SPACE CADETS
NASA wanted to tell Artemis II’s crew they’d been picked for the mission, but the crew members were waylaid by doctor’s appointments and staff lunches.
When NASA’s astronaut office tried to set up a meeting to tell four of its best and brightest that they’d been selected to crew the agency’s first moon mission in five decades, “one way or another all of us were late,” Victor Glover recalled to The Washington Post. None of the astronauts knew the meeting’s true purpose, and Glover was waylaid by a lunch with some of his staff, texting his apologies to his bosses. Another crew member, Christina Koch, was “very late” after she was unable to find a link to what she’d thought was a virtual meeting. Reid Wiseman, believing the meeting was just an update on the goings-on at the International Space Station, was at a doctor’s appointment across town when it began. He texted chief astronaut Joe Acaba: “I don’t think I’m going to make it.” Acaba responded, “It’s not about what you think it is. You have to get here.” Wiseman then switched his phone off to speak to his doctor. It was only after the appointment—about 40 minutes later—that he learned he’d been named Artemis II’s mission commander.
