One thing I love hearing is all of the female voices on these streams. I’ve listened to my fair share of Apollo recordings, but it’s so cool to hear women in Launch Control, Mission Control, and of course on Orion.

I’m not sure I can fully express how I feel about watching the Artemis II launch and knowing that, at this very moment, we have astronauts on their way to the moon.

The excitement I felt leading up to and during the launch was intense. This is such a huge moment in history. Not only are we returning to the moon for the first time in over 50 years, but we finally have a woman astronaut going to the moon as well. This is an achievement for humanity to continue space exploration, and it is also a significant achievement for women.

It wasn’t until 1968, during Apollo 8, that engineer Poppy Northcutt became the first woman in Mission Control, even though women had been doing incredible work at NASA before then, such as Katherine Johnson. There wasn’t a female astronaut until Sally Ride in 1983 on STS-7.

And now, finally, in 2026, we have Christina Koch going to the moon and Charlie Blackwell-Thompson serving as the first female launch director.