Take a tour of NASA’s new ride to the moon

HOUSTON, TEXAS—NASA astronaut Christina Koch is crouching in a replica of Orion, the spacecraft that will take her and three other Artemis II crew members around the moon and back. It’s a cramped space of just 330 cubic feet—about the size of two minivans.

The tight quarters mean that during the 10-day journey they’ll likely have to make do sleeping near the walls or hardware. But in the center of the craft, there’s an open space leading to a docking tunnel. It’s relatively uncluttered and, arguably, the best sleeping spot.

How do we know? The astronauts—jokingly—fight over it. 

“I basically called shotgun,” Koch says. “My argument, although it is very selfish to call shotgun... is that I’m the only one short enough to actually fit in there. What do you think? Are the boys going to buy that?”

“You actually elongate in space,” Artemis II pilot Victor Glover says, not missing a beat. “She may be too tall.”

This is the joy of spending time with Koch, Glover, and their Artemis II crewmates, Commander Reid Wiseman and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). In their more than two years of training together, they’ve clearly developed a summer-camp-like camaraderie and shared excitement over the mission.

National Geographic was invited to join the crew for a day at their office in NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, where the Orion replica is housed, as part of our partnership with the space agency to document their historic journey.

The magazine has been covering space exploration since the Mercury and Gemini missions of the 1960s. National Geographic photographer Dean Conger was even on the scene to capture the splashdown of Alan Shepard, right after he became the first American in space in 1961.

This time, we’re collaborating with the astronauts themselves. During the Artemis II mission, the astronauts will act as our photographers for the magazine, videographers for social media, and filmmakers for our documentary, on one of the coolest assignments ever—flying around the moon and traveling farther in space than any humans have before.

This past year, a few members of National Geographic’s staff trained the astronauts—plus backup crew members Jenni Gibbons of the CSA and NASA’s Andre Douglas—on different storytelling styles, including capturing video for cinematic documentary and social media.

While we were there, we also gave them an assignment: Take us on a tour of the Orion replica.

Here’s what they showed us:

How to crouch-step into the capsule

Even though the Orion replica is in a warehouse and not stacked atop a 300-plus-foot-tall rocket, the astronauts behave as if it is. To enter, Koch avoids a “zone of death” on the floor, marked with bright caution tape. “Because on the real vehicle, that will not be somewhere we can go,” she says. “We’re very careful to train like we fly.”

The “kitchen”

A few paces across from the capsule entrance, you’ll find the kitchen. This is where the crew’s water dispenser and handpicked food items will be stored, alongside their briefcase-size food warmer (i.e., their oven) and a fire extinguisher. Next to it, “you have your entire hospital,” Wiseman says. That’s where all the medical supplies are kept. It’s “the way most people have their kitchen at home,” he jokes.

The "bedroom”

Despite Koch’s calling shotgun on the tunnel, figuring out how or where the team will sleep is something that they might decide on in flight because it’s difficult to predict how the capsule will feel in low gravity. “The weirdest part about sleeping in space is that you don’t do anything different other than close your eyes,” Koch says. “You’re in your sleeping bag, but you’re in the same position all day, and all of a sudden you just” ... [Koch tilts her head pretending to fall asleep.]

The driver’s seat

Around the middle of the capsule are the command panels. These will house the flight and navigation controls, monitoring equipment, and communications hardware. Above the command panels are four windows “which will give us a beautiful view of Earth, when we’re in low Earth, and then high Earth orbit,” says backup crew member Gibbons. “And then eventually the moon as we do our lunar flyby.”

This might become one of the crew’s hangout spots, given its potential for a spectacular outlook. “I suspect we’re going to get some great views of the stars,” Hansen says, when the Earth or moon are not in sight.

Breathing in space

On the mission, precious resources like water and air must be conserved. Here, Hansen shows us how the air on the spacecraft is recycled. “After we exhale,” he says, breath gets sucked into a HEPA filter and then through a series of tubes to the “bowels of our spacecraft” where the carbon dioxide in the breath is removed and pumped back out.

The “gym”

The capsule also comes equipped with a collapsible space-rowing machine for exercise by the crew during the flight, to help stave off the muscle atrophy that can set in with low gravity. Here, Gibbons shows how to get in a workout without bumping into another crew member.

To note: The rower is on top of the entrance to the toilet, so they can’t be used at the same time. “We’re going to have to communicate,” Koch says, to avoid conflicts.

“Is that code for ‘hold it’?” Glover asks.

Most importantly: How to use the toilet  

On the Orion capsule, the toilet is actually underneath what we would call the floor on Earth, laid on its side, which means it can be easily accessed only in low gravity. Because of that, the crew has a mock-up built to more closely resemble what it might feel like in weightlessness. Here, Koch shows us how it works. “You need handholds, because you’re just floating up all over the place,” she says. “You need to keep yourself down on the toilet seat.” Then she points to the walls of the bathroom, which are covered with bright orange insulation. “Because our toilet is a little bit on the loud side. You have to wear hearing protection when you are in here.”

This tour will look and feel different in space

The capsule feels cramped on the ground, but in space, the crew will have more access to its entire three-dimensional volume, making it seem bigger. “I feel like that’s a salesman line, though,” Koch jokes. “Do we believe it?”

Follow along with National Geographic’s coverage of the mission here.