Jack: Good evening.

Welcome.

For the first time in over 50 years, Nasca -- NASA is on the verge of sending astronauts back to the moon.

The Artemis II crew will launch as early as late next year.

Four astronauts will pave the way for future lunar landings and missions to Mars.

On board will be the first woman in the first person of color to take part in a lunar mission.

Christina Cook and Victor will also be joined by Reid Wiseman and Jeremy Hansen.

>> When I was young, I had a poster of the earth rising, the famous picture taken on Apollo 8.

The fact that it was a human behind the lens made the picture profound.

It changed how we all thought of our own home.

The moon is not just a symbol of exploration.

It is a beacon for science and for understanding where we came from.

>> Pushing ourselves to explore is four to who we are, part of human nature.

We go out to explore about why we are, understanding the big questions about our place in the numbers.

The expiration is the first step on the path of getting humans to Mars.

>> The Artemis campaign has set such an ambitious goal for humanity.

It is inspiring contributions from around the globe.

They are coming together.

>> When I look at the Artemis II crew, they want to do this mission.

They are keenly driven, humble.

It is so cool to be around them.

Artemis II is a huge mission, but I hope we will look back and realize this was one tiny step in humans on Mars.

Jack: As part of our summer of space series, we are meeting some of these next generation space explorers and the astronauts paved the way for them one small step at a time.

Joining us now is Reid Wiseman, mission commander of Artemis II.

To start off, that is the closed backed I have ever seen.

I have done a lot of interviews.

I have been to the White House, red carpets but that wins the award is the coolest backed up.

Thanks for that.

Reid: I certainly appreciate it.

If you got to live and work on the International Space Station, you would have an inbox filled with 300,000 of these pictures.

Jack: Start with the mission and some of your observations.

Artemis II, for those not familiar with Greek mythology, Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo and goddess of the moon.

A perfectly appropriate name for the mission, but I have heard you talk about this being the Artemis generation.

What do you mean by that?

Reid: We've been to the moon.

The generation before us went in the late 1960's.

We know we can do that, but we have not done that in this generation.

I was that alive when they left the lunar service in 1972.

They are the last two humans on the moon.

It is time to go back, temper humans to do bold and daring things.

When we do that, we will inspire and motivate.

We what to see humans -- want to see humans on Mars.

Getting to the lunar environment is the first step.

Jack: Those of us who were alive in 1972, so many have asked, when are we going back?

To know that the answer is now is certainly reassuring.

We will get to some of those in a minute but let's focus on the mission and self.

Give us a sense of what the goals are going to be for Artemis II.

Reid: The goal is to see humans on Mars, coming back and getting to high-five our crewmates will be on Artemis III, IV, V, getting this vehicle ready to hand off to them so they do not have to worry about can the Orion spacecraft support four humans in the loop or environment?

-- in the lienor environment?

And help are the systems, can we find our location?

Those are the questions we will be answering on Artemis II.

Our peers on Artemis III can just focus on landing on the moon.

Jack: The estimate is about 10 days of flight.

Give us a sense of the things you will actually be doing during that span of time.

Reid: I love our mission profile.

It is a little over nine days.

We will launch out of the Kennedy space Center and do one lap around the earth, checking out basic systems on the spacecraft.

If that looks good, we have one larger burn that will send us out to 38,000 miles around the earth.

That will give us 24 hours in the earth environment to check out our life support systems.

If everything looks good there, we do one more burn that will send us out 250,000 miles around the moon and back to Earth.

During that transit to the moon and back is when we will be focused on looking at Artemis III and beyond.

What will the crew be doing to get ready to land?

We will look at space habitation, radiation sheltering and we will do every possible manual maneuver with that vehicle that we can.

Artemis II is fundamentally about four humans living and working on Orion and doing everything we can to bring down risk for Artemis III.

Jack: We talked about the more than 50 years that have passed.

I am curious about the quality of the equipment, the luncheon rocket.

Comparing into what we saw.

Those of us who watched this thought it was difficult to conceive of the fact that we were able to do this.

You talk about the Artemis generation.

I am curious about what this generation brings in terms of technology that we did not have back and that fact then.

Reid: If you watch any rocket, the rocket looks about the same.

Large cylinder, filled with liquid oxygen and propellant, goes through a rocket engine, since you into space.

Takes nine minutes to get into lower orbit.

Those fundamental characteristics will never change but what is changing is manufacturing capabilities, electronics, the way we communicate, the reliability of our systems where we used to have layers of redundancy, now we know how those systems work.

We can put other capabilities in.

When you are looking at Artemis II, you will see a lot of parts that we know work.

You will see an Orion capsule that looks a lot like the Apollo capsule.

We know that that design works, but when you come back the layers of the onion and look at what is went on inside, we have a modern vehicle ready to explore deep space.

Jack: I saw something that said that if you take the present date iPhone -- present day iPhone and compare it to the computer Powell of the Apollo vehicles, your iPhone has thousands of times more capacity than the Apollo.

Does that sound right to you?

Reid: I do not know but everybody always says there is more technology in your iPhone than in the Apollo program.

Although once -- all that once this makes me want to do is be in all of Apollo but I look at what is changed from Apollo until now.

A lot that happened because we landed on the moon.

When people in the 1960's and 1970's, when you watched Neil Armstrong on the moon, you were instantly drawn to stem.

You were brought into that world whether you wanted to be or not.

Lately, I have been thinking about humans doing daring things that are advancing humanity.

Whether you are a few surgeon during cancer or protecting people's DNA, doing things is so critical to advancing civilization.

Jack: We think back to President Kennedy when he talked about going to the moon because it was hard.

We will learn from it.

That underscores what you just said about what we took away from that 50 years ago.

Let me ask about your own background.

You graduated from RPI, one of the great science and engineering schools in the world.

You became an aviator and a combat fighter pilot.

Now this.

When do you remember this dream of becoming an astronaut emerging in your life?

Reid: Great question.

When I was little, I wanted to drive trains.

That changed into flying airplanes.

I have always been fascinated with humans operating machinery that other humans have waited.

It is amazing to me.

But formative in my young life was the Challenger disaster.

I was in elementary school.

We were gathered in the cafeteria watching and we knew something went tragically wrong.

But I also knew that that crew, they were heroes.

It would figure out a way to survive.

They did not.

When I watched our nation more and, if it sounds backwards, but that gave me his desire to explore and to do great rings.

-- things.

Jack: You spent 165 days on the International Space Station, with a number of other people, including Russian cosomauts.

What is the message that we can send in times of such political turmoil?

What is the message the world should get.

Reid: There is 1000 ways I want to answer this question, but there are political differences around our planet and certainly things that I do not agree with that I do not like, but what I have found time and time again is that when you get below the political layer and you find people that have a common goal and you work together that we are waving more alike than apart -- way more alike than apart.

What is my best friends is a Russian astronaut.

I still talk to him to this day.

He is a great human being.

As we work walking up for our exams in Russia before we launched, I stopped with my crew outside the exam building.

They were flying a flag for every member of the prime crew in the back of crew.

I saw the Russian flight, the American flag, the German slate, and the Japanese leg.

I -- japanese falg.

50 years ago we were all outward together now we are doing research together.

That is the message I want people to take away.

Jack: An important message for all of us, commander Reid Wiseman, commander of Artemis II .

We are honored to speak with you.

We want to wish you and everyone working on the project good luck.

Reid: On behalf of my crewmates, thank you for this opportunity.

Jack: Our pleasure.

Be well.