In 1969 a brown wooden box connected James Howard and his family to the mighty men on the moon.
The 71-year-old Stevenson safety officer remembers watching the first moon landing in black and white, on a tube television set topped with rabbit-ear antennas.
“Everybody was watching it on TV,” Howard said. “And I was crowded around the television with my grandparents.”
On April. 10, 2026, the Artemis II crew returned home after their 10-day moon mission. The expedition ended with a safe splash in the Pacific Ocean.
While the rocket made a figure eight around the earth and the moon, the Stevenson community could look into space knowing that there was life behind the atmosphere.
Katelyn Mandras, a general cleaner at Stevenson University, said that when she looks at the stars, she feels fearful. She further explained that the astronauts’ adventure took a lot of courage.
“It’s kinda scary,” Mandra said. “It is very daunting to look on a never-ending area that we know very little about.”
Despite how scary space travel can be, the four astronauts set out to expand humans’ knowledge of the universe. And they did so within a short timeframe.
On the mission, the crew flew over the moon. But that is not all they did. They traveled the furthest humans have gone in history.
According to NASA Artemis II went 248,655 miles (about 400,171 km) from Earth. The trip was made in approximately 10 days.
English professor Clinton McCallum wrote that when he looks up at the stars he cannot help but ponder the passing days.
“When I look up at the stars, I invariably think about time,” McCallum wrote in an email. “That what I am seeing in the moment happened long ago. That time and space are dynamically interwoven, and the individual experience of time varies radically in different places”
The public could stay up to date with the Artemis II mission by looking down at their phone. But many people chose to point their eyes up to the stars.
When the ship was heading off to the final frontier, Howard commuted to campus. When looking toward the clear sky, he would think how magnificent it was to know that somewhere in the stars there were people looking back at him.
“It was incredible to know that when I looked up to the stars there were people up there,” Howard said. “I just wish I was there, to be able to look back out of that spaceship and see the earth and say, ‘that’s where I live’ it’s pretty amazing.”
