Artemis II crew brings moon mission home to the NAC

When Christina Koch was hurtling toward the moon aboard Artemis II, she didn't immediately realize there would be crowds of rocket enthusiasts and kids in spacesuits cheering her on back down on Earth. She learned about it only partway through the mission.

"He [my husband] was like, 'You need to know something. This mission is having an incredible impact down here. It's moving people across lines. Everyone is paying attention.' We didn't know the public was watching us," Koch said to a packed theatre at the National Arts Centre on May 13.

About 300 people gathered around the NAC's Kipnes Lantern — a massive LED screen — to watch the live-streamed Artemis II launch on April 1. Kondwani Mwase, executive director of audience engagement at the NAC, was among them.

"There were people on the other side of the street, and, because of how big the lantern is, people can see from a lot of different vantage points. We were able to experience the takeoff in a way that's emblematic of what we do at the NAC — people coming together to experience something in unison," Mwase said. "People congregating, yelling, screaming, and cheering at the same time. The smiles and the pride on their faces was indescribable."

When the Canadian Space Agency first reached out late in 2025 to ask whether the NAC could stream the launch of Artemis II, David Leclerc, who operates the lantern, was immediately excited but uncertain about whether it could happen.

On May 13, Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen and his NASA crewmates — Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Reid Wiseman — held a Q&A at the National Arts Centre on their first trip to Canada since completing the lunar mission. The energy that surrounded the launch's live-stream four weeks earlier made clear why the public had been so invested.