"It felt like we were falling back to Earth": Artemis II astronaut Jeremy Hansen on his first "extraordinary" day in space

On his first day in space, Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, who is the first non-American astronaut to leave low Earth orbit, experienced the dramatic shift of seeing Earth both up close and from 60,000 km away—all within hours. The crew launched aboard the Orion spacecraft atop NASA’s powerful Space Launch System rocket on April 1 from Kennedy Space Center. Now traveling deep into space, they are nearly as close to the Moon as they are to Earth—and are set to fly by our natural satellite on April 6. A major milestone in humanity’s return to lunar exploration.