HOUSTON: Artemis 2 astronaut Jeremy Hansen felt like he was "falling out of the sky" as his spacecraft followed its complex flight path to the Moon, the Canadian said in a Saturday video call.
The four Artemis astronauts have passed the halfway point between Earth and the Moon on Saturday morning -- more than 150,000 miles (241,000 kilometers) from home -- as they zipped toward the first crewed lunar flyby in more than half a century.
Hansen, a 50-year-old former fighter pilot on his maiden voyage into space, said he saw "some extraordinary things" during the first hours aboard the Orion.
"By the time we had a bit of a nap and got up, the Earth was just so far away," Hansen, flanked by American crewmates Victor Glover and Reid Wiseman, told a question-and-answer session hosted by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
'Like falling out of the sky'
Hansen then described the translunar injection burn -- a maneuver that brought Orion within 200 kilometers of Earth before swinging around onto a new course for the Moon.
"It just felt like we were falling out of the sky back to Earth, and I said to Reid, 'It feels like we're gonna hit it,'" Hansen said.
"It's amazing that we're actually gonna go around and miss this thing. It was just so close and so to take all of that in was really phenomenal."
Hansen, who joined the CSA in 2009 following his career as a fighter pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force, will be the first non-American to fly around the Moon.
Orion's next milestone, set to take place on day five of the 10-day mission, is to enter the lunar sphere of influence, where the Moon's gravitational pull exceeds that of the Earth, according to NASA.
Hansen said he was looking forward to an up-close view of the far side of the Moon and seeing "an eclipse of the Sun behind the Moon, which will be pretty neat."
Hansen once cited a childhood encounter with a photograph of Neil Armstrong on the Moon as the seed of his passion for space exploration.
Asked about advice for children, the father of three urged youngsters to "follow your passions, but also share your passions with other people."
"To get big things done like we're doing in this capsule, to travel to the moon, to fly around the moon, you need a big team behind you. And that's true for all of us in our lives."