Reid Wiseman led the first crewed mission to venture moonward in 54 years. The spacecraft commander headed a team of four on the Artemis II shakedown cruise of the new Orion spacecraft, flying a trajectory that took them to the moon and then 4,700 miles beyond the lunar far side—farther from Earth than any human beings have ever ventured.
There is risk coming, going, and in between. The mission that began atop the most powerful rocket that has ever carried a crew ended with the Orion spacecraft crashing into Earth’s atmosphere at a speed exceeding 25,000 m.p.h. But Wiseman, a veteran of multiple combat deployments in the Middle East, is accustomed to danger—and he’s used to facing it in pursuit of a larger goal. Artemis II is just the first step in America’s return to the moon, with Artemis IV set to land there sometime in 2028.
“We look at Artemis II as the precursor to humans living and working on the lunar surface,” Wiseman says. “The important thing about being first is that there’s a second, a third, and a fourth.”
Kluger is a TIME editor-at-large
