Artemis II Headed Home, but Do We Have Neighbors?
Today, April 8, 2026, the Artemis II spacecraft will carry the four humans who reached farther than any human did, back to their home planet, Earth.
Below is a transcript of a new interview I had this morning in the company of former NASA astronaut, Winston (Win) E. Scott, with the anchor Shannon Cake on Newsmax (accessible in video form here). Shannon’s questions are marked with SC, while my and Win’s answers are marked with AL and WS, respectively.
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SC: I want to bring in former NASA astronaut Captain Winston Scott and Harvard University professor Dr. Avi Loeb.
Avi, I was watching your face as we were about to come to you and you were just beaming, hearing that communication. Good morning to both of you. Great to see you.
So, this amazing Artemis II mission, they made this space-to-space call with the ISS yesterday. This is a milestone. It really does just highlight how far communication technology has come in space. Dr. Loeb, let’s start with you, and then we go to the captain.
AL: What is really remarkable about this mission is the technology that is being used now that is so much better than the Apollo missions. Communication is far more rapid with 38 gigabytes transmitted per day, and that allows us to see beautiful images that we’ve never seen before of the Moon.
In particular, we see a lot of small craters. It is possible to assess how many small asteroid impacts compared to big impacts occurred on the surface of the Moon. When the Moon formed, it was molten rock so the surface was initially completely smooth. But now, after 4.5 billion years, there are lots of craters that scarred the Moon and we can learn a lot about its history. In fact, the astronauts saw flashes of light from impacts as they passed near the Moon.
But most importantly were the images of the Earth rising, because they give us a sense of how precious is the planet that we live on. When you live at home as a kid, you don’t appreciate your home as much as when you leave it as an adult and look at it from a distance.
And that means a lot because we are all in the same boat. We better work together to resolve conflicts. That’s what President Trump did overnight.
SC: Yeah, what a message that is. You’re right, Dr. Loeb. Well said, as you look on it our Earth is beautiful from outer space.
Captain Scott, I would imagine the ability to update the images of Earth from deep space. What does that mean to you to be able to bring those images back to humanity? It’s quite significant.
WS: Oh, absolutely. It’s quite significant. And the progress that we have made with computing power and processing power, of course, makes that all possible. And it just enables us to conduct better and more detailed science, more detailed exploration, not only the Moon, but our own home planet.
The entire mission is absolutely incredible and testament to the men and women who’ve made this possible. It’s really fun and fascinating to me that we have people on the space station a couple of hundred miles above the Earth and then people on a Moon spaceship hundreds of thousands of miles away and communicating back and forth with each other, communicating with those of us on the ground. Just incredible technology and a testament to American ingenuity and American leadership in science, technology, engineering and math. You could hear the excitement in the astronauts’ voices yesterday. This kind of moment for astronauts is being, you know, so far from Earth.
SC: Who is the closest human who can really understand maybe a little bit of what I’m feeling? I have been a fly on the wall and watched you, Captain Scott, listening to that conversation. What a moment it really was.
WS: Oh, absolutely. You know, words just don’t describe it. Even though I’m not there myself, reflecting back on my space shuttle missions and then listening and watching the faces from both crews is just a moment of pride for me and a moment of excitement for me. And I almost don’t want to use the word envy, but I’m proud and happy for these young people. I sure would love to be up there with them. Yeah, put me in, Coach.
SC: I bet there were a few of those feelings running through you yesterday as you listened to the conversation and watched this incredible mission launch bring us back so much information.
Let’s talk about that. The pictures from the far side of the Moon. Dr. Loeb, you were talking about them a moment ago. Incredible. So how do they unpack it a bit further for us? How do they inform you and your work, Dr. Loeb, and scientists globally on lunar geology and then even more broadly, to your point, evolution?
AL: Most interestingly, the Moon suffers a lot of impacts. And some of the impacts are rocks from the solar system. Some of them are objects from interstellar space. And we can learn much more about those impacts because there is no atmosphere to burn up the objects before they impact the Moon.
We should also keep in mind that the moon came from Earth. It was chipped off by a collision of. an object the size of Mars about 4.5 billion years ago. And actually, the Moon will also return to Earth in the distant future, 7.6 billion years from now, when the Sun will expand and engulf both the Earth and the moon. The drag on the envelope of the Sun will bring the moon back crashing on Earth. So, the moon is part of Earth in a way, and we are just examining the ancient conditions on Earth when we study the Moon. because not much has happened to this piece of rock.
And, of course, there are lots of opportunities to put scientific instruments on the Moon, such as radio telescopes or optical interferometers because it has no atmosphere. There is no radio interference on the far side. This is in addition, of course, to national security objectives in going to the Moon. That’s what the Artemis program is aiming to do.
SC: Yeah, absolutely. Captain, you know, I know that the astronauts, when they were on the far side of the Moon, they had to work quickly. They weren’t there long, maybe seven, eight hours at most, the 40-minute interval where they had no communication at all with us. But they had to really work fast and hard because of the opportunity to see what Dr. Loeb has laid out, the significance of their research, that is just years and years of training of doing the same drills that may seem mundane when you’re going through your training. But when you have seven hours to pull that off, talk to me about the pressure.
WS: Absolutely. And you’re right. They do spend years and years training for essentially a seven-hour period of time. And no amount of training, no matter how high the fidelity, can match the real thing. When the astronauts get there on the far side of the Moon, they have to execute these tasks in real time. There are some things that occur that you don’t anticipate in training. There may be other targets that they did not see, that something may not appear at the same angle as they saw. But in training, the cameras may not function properly. So, you are right. There’s a lot that goes into it, and there’s a lot of pressure on them.
But one of the things that attracts people like the Orion astronauts and myself is that challenge. You want to get there. You want to do the job. You want to do it well. You want to be able to handle any sort of unexpected things that crop up. And based on the images that we got back, I think the crew has done an amazing job.
SC: We’re going to provide a lot of great data for the geologists here on Earth to study, learn more about our Moon, about our Earth, about the evolution of our Solar System. Well, we know today that two things have popped up too, as you mentioned, Dr. Loeb, were two craters that we weren’t expecting. And I can only imagine the crew sitting there going: “wait, we didn’t know about that one.” And to your point, Captain Scott, the scramble of let me get this, this becomes your priority. They named one of them: `Integrity’, the name of the capsule that they’re flying. And then in the other crater they named a very special name.
I want to play a quick clip, involving the Canadian astronaut, Jeremy Hansen. You can feel the emotion from outer space, deep outer space there. Just to bring context to it, in 2020 Commander Reid Weisman’s wife, Carroll, passed away from cancer. And so, they named that crater, that bright, beautiful crater, Carroll, in her honor and to honor her children as well.
What a moment, Captain, that was.
WS: Absolutely. And you’re right, a very, very moving and touching moment. And I think in this case, very, very appropriate. And I’m at a loss of words as to what this all means.
But I think everybody that heard that can’t help but feel a little bit of the emotion that went into the naming of that prayer, Carroll. And I do hope that from now until eternity that name will stick and we will honor the wife of Commander Weisman and the mother of his children.
SC: Meanwhile, they’re making quick work. These astronauts are getting back to Earth now. The Friday splashdown off the coast of California expected the move to enter the Earth’s gravitational pull. It is incredibly risky. Dr. Loeb, what does that look like? And then I’ll end with you, Captain Scott.
AL: Right now, the spacecraft is following gravity, but it will eventually need to maneuver a bit in order to get to the right spot. These are all relatively secure procedures.
I should say that it’s very appropriate to name a crater on the Moon after Carroll, but also there are 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. There is more than one star to name per person on Earth.
And just think about the sky at night. The universe has much more real estate than we find here on Earth. And it opens opportunities for our future. So, it’s very inspiring. And I very much hope that the young kids watching this will be inspired to become scientists or technologists because we didn’t have that experience of humans getting so far for 54 years.
SC: Captain Scott, very quickly as we had to break here, your thoughts on this tricky mission, entering the Earth’s gravitational pull, sir.
WS: Yeah, well, of course, they’re already in the Earth’s gravitational pull. The telling moment is going to be when they hit the entry interface. That is when the vehicle intercepts the Earth’s atmosphere. It’s somewhere around 400,000 feet. That’s when you begin to sense the drag on the capsule, when it begins to slow down and when there’s the most dangerous part. You’re going so fast that air ionizes at super-hot temperatures outside. We want the thermal protection system or the heat shield to be working properly to keep these folks safe as they reenter and parachute to the ocean.
I am confident that it will all work well and we’ll welcome them back home in a couple of days.
SC: From your lips to God’s ears, we will all be watching and praying. Former NASA astronaut Captain Winston Scott and Harvard University professor Dr. Avi Loeb. Gentlemen, great conversation. Good to see you.
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Last night, April 7, 2026, I was interviewed by the anchor Rick Leventhal on Newsmax2 (accessible in video form here). Rick’s questions are marked with RL, while my answers are marked with AL, respectively.
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RL: Joining us now is a guy who might have some answers to the burning questions of, is there life in outer space? Director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at Harvard University, Professor Avi Loeb.
Professor, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here.
AL: Thanks for having me.
RL: So, what is the likelihood alien civilizations exist?
AL: Well, first, I wanted to salute President Trump for opening new frontiers. The one that we are all familiar with is artificial intelligence. It’s becoming exponentially better over timescales of years. And President Trump is leading the way on that. The second is the rejuvenation of space exploration. The Artemis II mission is doing fantastically well. We have views of the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun that we’ve never had before.
And you might wonder, how come the images are so crisp, clear? That’s because the spacecraft is transmitting 38 gigabytes per day. That’s much more than the Apollo missions ever did. So that’s a new frontier being enabled by optical communication lasers.
But the third frontier that President Trump opens is the potential for disclosure of information on alien intelligence. And I should say that is the most exciting of them all because artificial intelligence is based on a training data set limited to our Earth, whereas alien intelligence is based on a training data set that comes from the universe at large.
There is much more real estate beyond Earth. And so, the question is: does the U.S. government have interesting information? As you mentioned, there is a task force led by Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna. And if we get a glimpse at what the government knows, then I would be delighted to help them figure it out.
You know, that is the most exciting question in science. “Are we alone?” is also the most romantic question in science.
RL: Professor, my understanding is your own research has suggested the existence of molecular oxygen on Earth-sized planets in their sun’s habitable zone. Explain to us what that means as succinctly as you can for the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
AL: There are about 100 billion stars like the sun in the Milky Way galaxy alone. And about 10 percent of them have a planet the size of the Earth, roughly at the same separation. We all think that life started on Earth from a soup of chemicals on the surface. And if you start with similar conditions in billions of other places, it’s very likely that you’ll get similar outcomes. The fundamental question is, which of these exoplanets — planets around other stars, have life-as-we-know-it?
We don’t know. One way to check is to find oxygen in the atmospheres of those planets.
And indeed, there is a plan for a 10-billion-dollar space telescope that within two decades will be able to look for that. But there is another approach, which is to check for any packages in our mailbox. That’s a completely different approach. Maybe there is a tennis ball in our backyard that was thrown by a neighbor. Maybe there is something else. The Pentagon or the intelligence agencies might have a clue about this, because if there are any probes close to Earth, they might have collected data over the decades regarding that. And, of course, some of it is classified because it was obtained by classified sensors. But there might be other data that could be declassified. I would love to look at it.
I am leading the Galileo project that is collecting new data using new observatories that we constructed. We also went on an expedition to the Pacific Ocean to collect materials from an interstellar object. So, there is a lot to do. But overall, I think this is information that we should share with the public because we are all in the same boat here on Earth. That’s the message we got from Artemis II.
RL: Couldn’t agree more. Professor Avi Loeb, unfortunately, we have to leave it there because of all the breaking news. But we appreciate your joining the show. And let us know if you find any aliens.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, former director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (2005–2026), and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.
Professional website:
https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/
Social media:
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfessorAviLoeb
https://open.spotify.com/show/1zhndXkvSY2b8FdjspFpCd
https://x.com/ProfAviLoeb
