NASA is leading the way to the Moon, but the military won’t be far behind

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida—The US military has always been part of NASA’s human spaceflight program. The first astronauts were nearly all military pilots, and two of the four crew members set to fly around the Moon on NASA’s Artemis II mission were Navy test pilots before joining the astronaut corps. Artemis II, the first crew mission to the Moon’s vicinity since 1972, is set for launch Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Commander Reid Wiseman and pilot Victor Glover, both Navy test pilots, will be at the controls of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft for the ride to space. NASA astronaut Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen round out the four-person crew. The mission will depart from NASA property on Florida’s Space Coast, but the Space Force will play an important role in the launch. A range crew from the Space Force will track the SLS rocket as it arcs over the Atlantic Ocean. Their primary job will be ensuring public safety, with the unenviable responsibility of sending a destruct signal to the rocket if it flies off course. Thankfully for the astronauts inside the spacecraft, the Orion capsule has an abort rocket to pull it away from an exploding launch vehicle in the event of a catastrophic failure. An Air Force rescue team is on standby to rapidly deploy and retrieve the Artemis II astronauts if there’s an in-flight abort. Assuming everything goes well, the Navy has the charge of recovering the Orion spacecraft and its four astronauts at the end of their nine-day flight around the Moon. These responsibilities are nothing new to the military. The Space Force oversees public safety for every launch from Florida’s Space Coast, whether it’s a military or civilian mission. The Air Force has a long history of providing rescue support for NASA human spaceflight missions, and the Navy scooped up the Apollo astronauts when they returned from the Moon more than 50 years ago.