[ Dramatic music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Switch clicking ] -When you sit on the launch pad at that moment, you have to be at peace with everything in your life.

You want to make sure that everything -- everything's in order and that... people you love know that you love them and people that you've wronged know that you're sorry.

♪♪ Those final moments, the person that is spending the most time with you is actually your flight surgeon, your doctor.

They're the last person that you see.

And you kind of hand them the last important things, like your cellphone and your wallet.

♪♪ And now you're wearing clothes that have been picked out for you.

You're going on a six-month trip, and you're not even taking a toothbrush with you.

♪♪ I was just Anne.

It is the most rawly human that I've ever felt.

♪♪ When we got to orbit, it was nighttime, and all I could see was blackness.

♪♪ And as we're flying, I remember something catching my eye.

And I look out, and I see this thin, blue line.

You can just tell that it's curved.

And I realized I was seeing my first sunrise from space.

♪♪ And I caught my crewmate's eye, David, and we just looked at each other.

There was a smile on both of our faces, and we just looked back.

♪♪ -And confirmed hatch opening, 1:37 p.m. Central Time.

The International Space Station was 250 miles... -When I came through the hatch, it was actually the first time that I was in free float.

If there was a quantitative moment when you achieve your dream, it's when you float through that hatch... -First down is NASA's Anne McClain.

-...because it's the first time in your whole life that nothing's gonna stop you from getting to the International Space Station.

-Being united with the Expedition 57 crew.

Her first spaceflight.

-You're there.

You're just there.

And the joy is overwhelming.

♪♪ [ Soft music plays ] ♪♪ Okay.

I'm Anne McClain, and I'm on serial number 1001 for the audio recorder.

And this is my first astronaut log event, so...

So, there's the sync-up.

I'm an engineer.

I'm a black-and-white thinker.

I'm not an orator.

But for my part, I'm gonna do everything I can to try to describe to you... really what this experience is all about.

I really wish everybody on Earth could have the perspective that we have living up here, you know?

And I think it's easy to assume that that perspective comes from sitting at a window and looking back at Earth.

But a lot of that perspective actually comes from what it takes to live in space and the people that we do this with.

[ Dramatic music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ There's nobody further away from Earth than I am right now.

We are exploring on the very fringes of what human beings are capable of.

♪♪ We're starting to talk about going back to the moon or even going to Mars.

And so I remember distinctly looking up at the moon sometimes and just thinking, "Wow.

Humans are gonna step foot back on the moon, and maybe that could be me."

♪♪ -Station Huntsville on space-to-ground 3 for David and ISS Experience.

-Video 3.

-Yeah.

So we just need you to move the "Z" cam about 1.5 feet towards the forward side to center it up in the hatch.

And that's great.

We like that view.

-Before being an astronaut, I was working as a family physician up in the Arctic, in Canada, a little community.

So, I learned there the art of being self-reliant and having a strong bond with your team.

The space station, of course, is this giant, international, orbiting laboratory, with hundreds of experiments being conducted at any given time.

But mostly it's biological and medical studies.

The reason why is that being in space is just bad for your body.

The problems that affect astronauts -- they all are resemblance to real disease back on Earth, except here, they develop very quickly in healthy individuals.

So we're like the perfect guinea pigs for medical research.

-Okay.

I might just watch it for a few more sweeps here.

I think this is good to go.

I really like it, actually.

-And with everything that we are learning about the medical effects of living in space, that will help us be more confident to send people even further than the space station, back to the moon and eventually to Mars.

-Our third and final node.

The last one was really great.

I was really excited to see that one.

-Happy P.I., happy crew.

[ Mid-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ -Up until yesterday, there were only three of us on board.

Then, yesterday, three new crew members arrived -- our good friends Nick, Christina, and Aleksey.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Christina Koch of NASA, Nick Hague of NASA, and of course Soyuz Commander Aleksey Ovchinin, warm greeting by Expedition 59 crewmates.

-[ Speaks indistinctly ] Welcome to the U.S. segment.

It's a little room here.

-Oh, my God!

♪♪ -Cold drinks?

Are you ready for a cold drink, or do you want to... -I don't even know what I'm ready for.

I'm definitely not, like, dire need.

♪♪ -Before I became an astronaut, I worked in the Arctic and the Antarctic.

I was running science experiments and doing maintenance upgrades for scientists and researchers that weren't able to be there.

♪♪ My sort of bedroom on station, what we call our crew quarters, is actually tucked into the ceiling.

So, you know, to get into it, I would go like this and then, you know, go up into the ceiling, into my crew quarters.

So that was obviously very disorienting my first couple days, when I would come out of my crew quarters and have to figure out which way I was pointing and which way my feet should go and whatnot.

-The net is in front of the microscope, so we don't want to touch that rack.

CEVIS is on motion isolators, vibration isolators.

So we don't want to grab that, which is... -They're so perfect.

-...super tempting.

They are.

And you want to keep your legs together.

And if you happen to kick something, I will say that turn around and look at what you kicked, 'cause it's probably important.

-Okay.

-Make sure it's not floating away.

-Yes.

And the sooner you can remap everything to be 3-D, the quicker you'll be able to move through here.

When you first arrive, you're dependent on the crew that has been there before you for pretty much everything.

You're learning how to do everything for the first time again -- how to eat, how to sleep, how to call home -- all those really important things.

-...go and I will tell you this.

If your feet are stable, the rest of you is stable.

♪♪ -Good evening, Exhibition 59.

Y'all rest up tonight.

And that's all I have.

Anything for us?

-Nope.

Just thanks for a great day.

[ Folk music plays on speakers ] -♪ Love yourself, and don't give it ♪ ♪ And when you... ♪ -Got some apples, David, if you want one.

A lot of ways, it's like camping here.

You don't have a table to put your stuff down on when you're eating in the woods.

You want me to toss you one?

-Yeah.

-Of course we have to have duct tape on the table.

We accept that all of our food has been attached to gray tape at some point.

Here.

I'll break it down.

You can just put it on your mouth all at once.

Ready?

You think you can grab it?

You want me to -- Here.

I'll cut it smaller for you.

Are you sure?

It's kind of big.

-My race here against the clock.

About 56%.

-Okay, ready?

-I'm ready.

-You got it.

Ah!

-Oh!

[ Laughing ] [ Mid-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ -Right now, space station, we're camping in our backyard, testing our technologies for survival in space.

And when we're happy that our camping equipment works well in the backyard of our own home, then we can leave Earth orbit and go deeper into space.

If we move to the moon, well, that's like camping on a little mountain an hour's drive away.

But our Everest, our big ambition, is Mars.

-Station Huntsville on space-to-ground 2 for Christina and Veggie.

We just wanted to give you guys a heads up that historically, the plants have needed water approximately every three days.

So if someone can check on them about that often, and then that should keep them healthy and happy and eventually ready for you to munch on them.

♪♪ [ Indistinct radio chatter ] -So, we are learning how to grow vegetables and plants on a space station.

And this is not only good for the human psyche, like, allowing us to actually see greenery and have a salad with dinner, but it's really important for long-duration space flight.

Plants are vital to maintaining our atmosphere and to maintaining certain nutrients in the human body.

♪♪ -Route the cable behind the FOP unit.

It will be connected at the upper-left.

[ Beep ] -On orbit, water is a really big deal for us, so we try to recycle as much as we can.

I'm doing part of a power cable install.

Even simple tasks like installing a new power cable up here can be pretty complicated.

Cable has a mind of its own.

♪♪ -Whoo!

-Aw, yes!

-Yes!

Yes!

I got it!

-Touchdown!

-[ Laughs ] -When astronauts first started flying long-duration missions, astronauts were losing the same amount of bone density in a month that an osteoporotic 80-year-old woman was losing in a year.

We talk about the International Space Station as a proving ground for future deep-space exploration.

Now, imagine if we had skipped this proving ground, and we sent people to Mars, and then we discovered it and we couldn't fight against it.

We had to come up with a countermeasure.

♪♪ -It's really important to exercise on board the space station.

If you're not careful, you will waste your muscles and your bones away.

In my case, I have young children.

I hope that I can come back to Earth and be able to carry them on my shoulders still.

-Good evening, Expedition 59.

Great work today.

You had a very busy day.

And it's a great job across the board.

[ Telephone ringing ] -Okay.

[ Laughs ] [ Dramatic music plays ] ♪♪ [ Mid-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ -Good.

-Good?

♪♪ -[ Speaks indistinctly ] -50 years ago, there was a group of women with the same talents and the same passion that I have.

Now known as the Mercury 13, they were the first group of women who underwent the selection process to become astronauts.

Jerrie Cobb was one of them.

I feel a very kindred spirit with her.

-Max, would you send down my chute?

-Jerrie, when did you start lobbying to get women into the space program?

Or was it always a part of NASA's idea?

-I think it's always been a part of their thinking that eventually we will put women into space.

NASA's attitude was that there's just no hurry about it.

-Why do you think, then, with you available, passing all of the tests right and left and very quickly, that they didn't make an effort to get you up sooner than you may go?

-Well, I wish I knew.

[ Chuckles ] I wish I knew.

There's no legitimate reasons.

There's no reasons at all why we haven't used women astronauts.

-Maybe that says something about the state of thinking about women in the United States.

-By 1960, she had 7,000 flight hours and held three world aviation records.

She was the best in the world.

Not the female best.

She was simply the best.

However, that's where her deep passion for space exploration met a barrier, because she and the other women were excluded from being considered as astronauts.

♪♪ This is where I was born to be.

I never considered and would never consider a different line of work.

At the same time, I am keenly aware now how lucky I am to have had the opportunities I had when I had them, because Jerry was also born to be here.

♪♪ -You can leave the lights off.

We'll just compensate by changing the exposure on the camera.

It shouldn't take but a minute -- actually, about three minutes.

-Space is an absolutely unforgiving environment.

It is not built for humans to live in.

Yet we do.

[ Indistinct radio chatter ] -No response required.

We just wanted to let you know... -I prepared for this space flight by training to be an army officer.

I spent 15 months in combat flying Kiowa Warrior helicopters.

And moving on to step 14 for the measurement.

♪♪ [ Indistinct radio chatter ] ♪♪ -15 months in Iraq will teach you how to work in a team whose lives are in your hands.

♪♪ It teaches you how to not get complacent.

♪♪ It teaches you how to operate in an environment where you're there for so long that you have to be able to relax.

But there always has to be part of you that's ready to surge.

♪♪ You can't work so hard that you're exhausted at the end of the day and you have nothing left to give.

Because at any moment, in Iraq, flying in a helicopter, and here on the International Space Station, we can get a single alarm, and suddenly, we're not watching a movie on a Friday night with our crew.

We're actually getting in our vehicle and flying back to Earth.

♪♪ -That's the surface that I put the surface -- -Yeah.

♪♪ [ Alarm beeping ] [ Suspenseful music plays ] ♪♪ -That was right when I hit the close button on the door system.

-I'm looking, smelling to see if there's any smoke.

I know that the rest of the team is rallying to make sure that we know what's going on, that everyone's okay.

-Are you getting anything?

...on the racked power switch.

-Any CSACP reading?

-Five seconds.

-The most dangerous thing, of course, would be a fire on board.

You can't go outside.

You got to fight the fire while it's inside.

-The motor is there.

...we're still in 2.1.

We went through -- -Still zero, Anne.

-We did have a crew member using T2 at the time, and the T2 had just ramped up from 6 miles an hour to 10 miles an hour, and we got the alarm.

-Just to see that surge of all that training was just super reassuring.

♪♪ -Okay, guys.

We're gonna step out.

Don't have too much fun.

-Oh, wait.

-Let's do our picture.

-Anne and David and Christina and I -- we had never done a spacewalk.

...shirts down.

All we had was the training we brought with us on the ground.

[ Dramatic music plays ] ♪♪ -...hooked to the fourth extension of the handrail.

You can release me from the airlock.

[ Indistinct radio chatter ] ♪♪ -Greetings.

-Greetings.

-Doing a spacewalk for an astronaut -- that's one of the big highlights of any astronaut's career.

♪♪ After all these years of training, you kind of finally become yourself, a little satellite of the planet, in your own autonomous, kind of human-shaped spacecraft, thanks to our trusty spacesuits, It's got everything to keep you alive in a deadly vacuum of space.

[ Indistinct radio chatter ] -We're down to the bottom.

-Half an inch is inside, and half an inch in depth.

-So, you're gonna head to the...worksite and be up the airlock.

So you're gonna go past the high-pressure gas tanks beneath the... ♪♪ [ Indistinct radio chatter ] ♪♪ -Okay.

Copy that, Anne.

-I kind of had a moment of a pause during the spacewalk.

And I turned, and I looked out into the rest of our solar system.

And the moon seemed so far away, even from the space station.

Yeah.

♪♪ -And the rest of the solar system was just -- It was enormous.

And here I am, this little, tiny human, floating on the outside of the space station, holding on and just understanding the vastness of it.

-On the UIA, EMU 1 and 2 oxygen valves open.

♪♪ Okay.

And both of you can switch power to SCU.

Expect a warning tone.

♪♪ Switch power, EV-1 and 2, to on on the UIA.

-...airlock.

-Okay.

That should be your last task.

Maybe a photo opportunity in here.

-Sorry.

-...test.

-Yes!

Pretend it's normal!

[ Laughter ] -[ Speaks indistinctly ] -The first time that I told my mom I wanted to be an astronaut, I was 3 years old.

And I remember my mom telling me from a young age when I was feeling discouraged, probably high school-ish age... and...

I was sharing with her some doubts that people had shared with me about... this career path that I wanted.

And she asked me, and she said, "Well, do they work for NASA?"

And I said, "Well, what are you talking about?

No.

They're, like, kids at my high school, teachers."

And she said, "Well, if they don't work for NASA, I guess their opinion doesn't matter, does it?"

And her point was that I needed to keep going until the people that actually had that decision told me no.

And so I did.

-I can hear you guys having so much fun out there.

I know you did a great job.

We're real proud of you.

-On the space station, it's a very known environment.

We put it there.

We built it.

When you go to the moon, you're back to an exploration, to the unknown.

You know, I often get asked, "Why are we going back to the moon?"

Why Anne McClain wants to go to the moon is because I think that we can answer some really exciting questions about the origins of life on Earth.

As a society, we're always looking around the next corner and saying, "What's out there?"

And I want to be a part of a society that always asks those questions.

[ Down-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -I have some numbers for you guys throughout that procedure.

I have saved them.

-Copy that, Christina.

Thank you for doing that.

We have some ground commanding to complete prior to your next physical activity.

If you'd like, we can give you a call when we're ready for that activity.

-Good morning.

And go ahead.

-We have had the chance to learn from a previous crew and have passed the baton to the next crew.

This is a wheel that turns.

Crews pass the baton to each other, keeping this amazing outpost of humanity functional and productive and beautiful.

♪♪ -All the way up there is... ♪♪ ♪♪ -Already been six months on board ISS.

In a few weeks, I'm leaving back to Earth.

[ Down-tempo music plays ] We hear these stories from previous crew members about how gravity is not your friend when you haven't been in her presence for a long time.

So, we're gonna go back in our little Soyuz.

Imagine this is the curve of the Earth and this is the curve of our orbit.

They're exactly matched.

That's how we're falling around the world constantly.

If we slow down just a little bit, a few percent of our total speed, that's just enough that the curve of our orbit will converge towards the curve of the Earth.

And we slowly come down and down until our spacecraft hits the atmosphere.

It will just inflame the capsule, and we'll turn into a giant shooting star.

Going back to Earth, it's a bit scary, actually.

♪♪ -[ Laughs ] -Got a whole nother thing of shrimp.

-You can put maybe a... -Maybe a little lemon.

-How about a Craisin on top?

Give it a little sweet at the end of that.

-Oh!

-Mint Life Saver.

-Whoa.

A mint Life Saver.

[ Laughs ] [ Music plays on stereo ] -A Craisin -- there might be something there.

-I'm all for it.

Kind of like Brie and... -I just tried to soak up the moment and remember these faces.

-Alright.

-Being able to pass each other our favorite foods across the table without even having to ask... You know, that same group of people won't ever be around that table again.

-Stacked real high, though.

It's gonna be tough to, like, do a trick.

-I'm just gonna -- -[ Speaks indistinctly ] That is actually... -I'm gonna hold the shrimp and take the olive off.

-There's no way that goes... [ Both laugh ] -Watch the shirt.

Precious few.

-It's a rare shirt.

-Oh!

You got it.

Round 2.

[ Laughs ] We really are like fish in an aquarium.

[ Laughter ] [ Dramatic music plays ] ♪♪ -We wish you safe travels and look forward to seeing you in the future.

♪♪ -When a crew leaves, you're not just saying goodbye to those people.

You're saying goodbye to your group dynamic.

♪♪ You're saying goodbye to all of the memories that you shared together that are so hard to explain to other people.

♪♪ -[ Laughs ] To humans.

-Spectacular humans.

-We said goodbye to Anne and David and Oleg, our crewmates from Expedition 59.

One of my favorite moments in the departure was literally right before the hatch was closing and we were hugging.

And so we're having, you know, "Love you.

Happy landing.

Soft landing.

See you on Earth."

-And then my crewmate Anne takes a moment to yell at me, "Oh, by the way, I left you some almond butter."

-He's been on... -[ Speaks indistinctly ] -Congratulations, Aleksey... -We're not hugging.

-...on taking command of the International Space Station.

-Bring it on in.

-It just reminds you that even though we do these things that are grandiose, it's all done by people.

[ Indistinct conversations ] -One big flip.

Six of us.

1... -Ohh!

-Gonna break something.

That's not a memento.

[ Laughter ] -Like he's trying to escape.

♪♪ -So, during my mission, I broke the record for the longest continuous time spent in space by a woman.

But I happened to be in the right place and the right time.

And that makes me grateful for those that paved the way for that to be an option.

My biggest hope, for the record, is that it is broken as soon as possible, because that means we are continuing to push the boundaries.

♪♪ In any given week, my eyes see the same things, the same colors.

Same for smells.

Same for the things we taste.

Same for the things we touch.

There aren't many differences to sort of pin those memories on.

-Hey, Christina, please stand by on space-to-ground 2.

I'll be with you in just a minute.

♪♪ -Living in space is not easy.

We've had some Americans that have lived up here for a long time, but we have not had anybody go for more than a year.

We think that missions to Mars and the round trip on the short end will be somewhere 2, 2 1/2 years.

Those people are not going to return to Earth as the same people that left.

-The process of welcoming a new crew is really one of the milestones of the life cycle of a crew member on board the space station.

I in particular really enjoyed sort of setting up their rooms so that they could actually come into a space, see photos of their families, and have it feel truly theirs immediately.

[ Dramatic music plays ] ♪♪ When Jessica Meir arrived to the space station, I was so very excited to see her.

-Hello!

-I joke that until I saw Jessica arrive to space station, I actually had forgot that I was floating.

-Welcome, welcome, welcome.

-You look good.

-[ Squeals ] -Good job!

-Welcome!

-So seeing her giddy to be there and so excited by all the little things really reminded me that I was in a unique environment.

-Welcome!

Welcome!

[ Squeals, laughs ] -I think Jessica and I share a special bond, because we went through so much of our training together.

We spent time together on the weekends.

We loved to do the same things.

I actually felt very alone when I first got to space and she wasn't there.

She is my best friend.

-And here's the last sample, if you'd like to take a look.

-Jessica, NX Delta 1, location empty.

-Just burn stuff.

-We are all checked out and ready to go on that camera you just set up.

-1001.

Astronaut log, Jessica Meir.

-As long as you're not, like, right above the camera looking down or something like that.

-Okay.

-And then the bias towards, you know, having a camera, like, at eye level, but you can be upside down, you can be sideways.

-Right.

Okay, thanks.

Thank you.

-Bye!

[ Soft music plays ] ♪♪ -After settling in a little bit, I was very anxious to get to the cupola.

We happened to be passing over the Himalayas in my first view.

And seeing those mountain peaks and the gradations of the white snow and all of the mountains and valleys, it was a breathtaking sight.

And the Himalayas are of course quite special to me, since before I was an astronaut, I was studying the bar-headed goose, the species that migrates over the Himalayas.

So there I was, my very first moment on the space station, looking out through the windows of the cupola and thinking about my geese looking down at them.

♪♪ ♪♪ -When you become the senior crew member, you realize that there's nobody to turn around to and ask a question to.

People are gonna be asking you those questions.

And you really have to step up and recognize that sometimes you might not know every answer, but you can definitely rely on your experience to be the best person to answer that question.

Alright.

You guys good to start the USOS part?

-Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

-Need a break or anything?

-That sounds good.

-So... when you're new here, there's so much going on that I made these little, like, cheat sheets for Amer stuff so that before you go to bed at night, you can just, like, have something to look at real quick so that you know when you go to bed that if there's an alarm overnight, you've just refreshed on what to do.

It's the quick and dirty.

-Okay.

-Yep.

-Just like the training ones, only in perfect condition.

-Yeah.

Exactly.

They've got the weird emergency switch where emergency is actually clockwise.

-Yep.

[ Dramatic music plays ] -Good morning, and welcome to Mission Control Houston and NASA's coverage of today's historic spacewalk from the International Space Station.

Astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir have spent the past week getting ready for this spacewalk, which will be the first to be conducted by two women.

And prep is proceeding according to schedule so far.

They are already suited up inside the Quest Airlock.

And as you can see now, we are joined by astronaut Anne McClain, who is the most recent person on Earth to have done a spacewalk.

So we appreciate you coming to talk with us, Anne.

-It's great to be here this morning.

-I had heard a lot of different stories about coming out of the hatch the first time, but I of course didn't know how I was gonna feel.

It actually does feel different looking at Earth just through your helmet visor versus looking out of the window.

The colors are even more vibrant and I think, also, just mentally realizing that, you know, there is nothing between the vacuum of space except for this spacesuit and your visor.

♪♪ -You're translating port to bay 12, headed nadir of the FHRC.

-The temperature can swing outside the space station, depending if you're in the sun or the shade, a total of about 400 degrees.

And so a big part of that life-support system is the cooling.

♪♪ It is very fatiguing.

It's physically and mentally taxing.

It can be the metabolic equivalent of running a marathon.

So they're getting toward the 20th mile of a marathon here.

But one of the things that they're trained to do very well is to hone in more mentally when they're physically tired.

-You can drive all four bolts to torque with a minimum of three additional turns.

Any order.

-Participating in the first all-woman spacewalk with Jessica was definitely the highlight of my career and maybe even my life to this day.

I remember a moment where we caught each other's eye.

At that point, we knew we had done it.

We were two women outside the airlock, in the vacuum of space, in our spacesuits.

And that would never change, no matter what.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Christina and Jessica, incredible work today.

Welcome home.

We're glad to have you back, and we're so proud to be up here with you.

With that, under DCM, if you would, please take your O2 actuator to press.

♪♪ -Thank you.

-A pretty good pass up here.

-Perfect.

-I got something the other day, but there were a couple other spots that I wanted to look at.

-Awesome.

It's really nice that we have these great passes over the Amazon on the weekend so we can actually get in here and get some pretty -- -Oh, wow.

-I know.

I love seeing the agricultural lands and how they're centered around rivers and stuff.

It just never ceases to amaze me.

-I am very honored to feel like I was part of something historic, given the first all-women spacewalk.

I have actually been pretty overwhelmed by that, to see how much people have paid attention to it, how much it has resonated and meant to people of all different backgrounds, of all different ages.

The closer that we get to making space more accessible to everybody, the closer we get to being a truly spacefaring species.

♪♪ [ Dramatic music plays ] ♪♪ -Station Houston on 2-4.

Jessica or Drew?

I just wanted to let you know that we are ready for you... -Time to wash the hair.

I'm going to apply a little bit of shampoo and work that through.

-So, it's Expedition 62 now.

It's just Drew Morgan, Oleg Skripochka, and myself.

Christina Koch and Luca Parmitano and Sasha Skvortsov left just last week.

So a pretty big change for us up here, going from six people to three.

-Hey, Drew.

-Bridging that gap from the Apollo program, which is now 50 years behind us, to the Artemis program, NASA's new program to return to the surface of the moon, is the ISS.

Because the ISS has taught us about international partnership, and it has taught us how to live and work in space for a continuous, long period of time.

-It's a team effort up here.

-Here's an opportunity to go to the moon... and understand now what we didn't know hundreds of years ago about "Hey, we are big enough to have an impact on an entire planet by the things we do."

And they're visible from space.

We can see evidence of urbanization and glacial retreat.

We owe it to our moon and to Mars to minimize the impact that we have when we go there.

-One of the photographs that really has played a big role in my life is that iconic "Earthrise" photo.

That was captured the very first time looking back at our planet with human eyes.

It really transformed how human beings felt about our own planet, about themselves, their significance in the solar system.

And it's that Apollo image that really was pivotal in creating the environmental movement.

And this time, with Artemis, I think it will be an even stronger impact on that inspirational component, because we'll be representing a much more diverse population coming from Earth.

-Hey, Jessica.

We had to reconfigure some of your camera routing in the cupola.

Thank you very much.

-I'm not really looking forward to going home right now.

[ Soft music plays ] And that is interesting in a whole new way now, given what is going on back on Earth.

Since we have been up here on the space station, we have had this terrible outbreak of COVID-19.

♪♪ We're not the first humans to see something of great magnitude while people were removed from Earth up here on the space station.

Frank Culbertson was up here when the 9/11 attacks took place.

Sergei Krikalev, a Russian cosmonaut, was up here in 1991, and there was the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But this one seems even the most extreme.

The COVID-19 outbreak is something that has swept across the entire planet and is really affecting every other human but the three of us up here.

-...with you on three.

-It's been a good mission, a successful mission.

10 EVAs conducted.

Got to do robotics support, captured visiting vehicles.

But I found that I missed my family more than I thought I would.

I have four kids at home.

I missed an entire school year of their lives.

I'd say I'm ready to go.

Nine months is a long time.

♪♪ -1,001.

This will be for astronaut log number three.

This is gonna be my last log experience.

I'm worried that once I get back down to the ground that it's going to start seeming like a dream, like it never actually happened.

♪♪ -Great job, guys.

Good luck on the trip back home.

-Okay.

It's stardate 107.

And it's departure day.

♪♪ -Expedition 62 departing.

[ Bell ringing ] There's so much going on just in terms of your body dealing with returning to gravity again and the thrill, really, of the ride down.

-All three of tonight's departing crew members here in the frame.

And the hatch is now closed on the Soyuz.

♪♪ -It's a very interesting time right now in human spaceflight.

We are building new vehicles in the U.S. that we can launch again from American soil with SpaceX and Boeing.

I hope that we have a spectacular success rate with our new commercial spacecraft, and I hope that we do so internationally.

No one country on their own can accomplish something truly spectacular, like getting all the way to Mars, which I think makes it all the more exciting.

Because just like here at the International Space Station, doing something with a diverse team will make it such a more special and impactful mission for everybody.

♪♪ -And that was a good voice check, loud and clear, so we are ready to begin the welcoming ceremony.

[ Applause ] -And there they are.

First across the hatch, Mike Hopkins.

Today begins the first full-duration science mission of NASA's Commercial Crew Program.

And here's Victor Glover.

-As a test pilot flying the first operational mission of the Crew Dragon was literally the dream mission.

This is an important step in our journey to the moon and eventually on to Mars.

-And recording has now started.

-Victor Glover, astronaut log, in the Columbus module, on GMT 3:59, Christmas Eve, 2020.

♪♪ Apollo happened in the '60s and '70s.

And so the world was in a very interesting place -- the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam.

So Apollo happened while all of those real-life things were happening.

And it was uplifting to a lot of people all around the world, but it also missed a lot of people.

-Hey, Mike, we are a go with your plan to take off some of those ties, and we'd just appreciate pictures when you're done.

-I think that that is another strength of the Artemis program, is that because it's happening today, it has a greater chance to bring the world collectively together, especially because that crew could potentially look much more like the rest of the planet.

-Okay, big picture, our game plan is for you to do the APFR relocate and the O.I.

lift relocate, as well.

♪♪ -That's a good view.

On two.

-This space station -- it has given us a process to test out technology, to test out spacesuits, to test out laboratory facilities, manufacturing capabilities.

But it has also given us a place to learn to exist in space.

And so that process is more important than an end state.

I think the biggest thing I learned on the International Space Station during my time in space is that you have to listen to space and let it teach you.

-The most significant realization I had on this mission is that if I had been born 50 years ago, I would have never had this opportunity.

And I look back at the Earth, and I wonder, "Who do we exclude now?"

-The one thing that I hope that I can convey and share with people is that we are all in this together.

We need to live our lives that way.

It's so easy to understand when you're looking back at the planet from above.

It just makes sense.

-Our beautiful, blue planet in the middle of the deadly vacuum of space, with no new air, no new water.

It's all recycled.

When you see that, it's obvious that this is our spaceship for the whole of humanity.

-Together, we're exploring.

And to me, that's an important reason why we even have a space station and a space program.

You know, if we're not moving forward, we're moving backward.

And this is the moving-forward part of what we do as humanity.

-5...

Core stage engine start.

3...2...1...

Boosters and ignition.

And liftoff of Artemis I.

We rise together, back to the moon and beyond.

[ Dramatic music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪