On Tuesday the Artemis II crew and astronauts aboard the International Space Station held a live voice link, exchanging views and stories from orbit. Mission Control started the connection with a routine voice check, and then the Integrity spacecraft — carrying Canada’s Jeremy Hansen alongside Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch — joined the call.
Crew members on the station said they had DME TV up and could see the Artemis vehicle, adding that the link “made our entire week.” During the exchange Artemis II reported being roughly 201,726 miles from Earth at one check and later said they were about 25 nautical miles from the planet during the call. The Integrity team described the surreal sight of Earth growing in their window as they approached trans-lunar injection; Hansen jokingly turned around and said they were “going to run right into it.”
Conversation ranged from operational topics to personal impressions. ISS astronauts asked how seeing Earth from near the Moon compared with views from low Earth orbit. Christina Koch said she missed the Station’s ability to pick out specific places, but that the scale and the blackness surrounding Earth from the Artemis vantage underscored the planet’s fragility and a shared humanity.
They also discussed how ISS training and flight experience translated to Artemis operations. Koch said the flight-operations principles and the real-time, high-dynamic procedures practiced on the Station proved invaluable for the crew, and that practical microgravity habits — food and water handling, and moving around in tight quarters — had made their way into the capsule routine.
The two teams traded lighter anecdotes: an awkward water-training “process escape” and a joking contest over the “largest process escape,” a training dare that led Reid Wiseman to grow a mustache, and a moment when the Integrity crew burst into laughter as Earth seemed to expand quickly in their window before a translunar burn.
Food came up, too. Integrity listed menu items such as mango salad, sweet-and-sour chicken, butternut squash and spicy green beans; the ISS crew confirmed they had some of the same items and said they were mirroring meals for the call. Koch cheered on colleagues aboard the Station, and Jessica Meir returned the goodwill, recalling that she had sprinted to the far end of the Station to claim they were the furthest away at one point.
Reid Wiseman closed the conversation by calling the opportunity to speak between the two vehicles “a true treat.” After the exchange Mission Control returned to normal operational audio.