Not every space mission happens in orbit. Some begin much closer in the choices we make every day.
What can NASA’s Artemis II mission – with Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen – teach us. Let’s explore.
With my limited information, I understand the mission rests on key building blocks:
- The Spacecraft: Orion, the exploration vehicle to carry and sustain the crew and return them safely.
- The Rocket: Space Launch System (SLS) that provides payload mass, volume, and departure energy — the backbone for deep space exploration.
- The Ground Systems: Predominantly based at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, providing the facilities and infrastructure to support the mission.
- The Science: The learning that guides further safe and efficient human exploration of not just the Moon but also of Mars.
In 1630, William Bradford said, “All great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.” Artemis II is a testament to that.
Finding Our Space
Mapping this to our own journeys and career aspirations, these building blocks exist in our personal and professional lives.
- The Spacecraft: Your interface with the world
- You gauge the challenges and opportunities in the customer’s environment by listening, observing, and capturing their context. These are the hands and eyes equivalent to the whole learning mission.
- The Rocket: Your drive
- Your energy to learn, solve and evolve solutions for your customers. This comes as a culture that is built over time through a set of efforts, setbacks and continuous learning. All small and big failures help strengthen your readiness.
- The Ground Systems: Your backbone
- An invisible, enabling system – education, learning resources, tools – to experiment, fail, learn and succeed. Every little contribution in the ecosystem does their part to build a strong foundation. Recognise this with humility.
- The Science: Your collective effort
- No achievement is truly individual. It is a combination of culture, discipline and the people — family, friends, colleagues; all contributing quietly. Even in individual sports like tennis, there is a system in play that is not visible on the surface.
The Artemis II mission – from launch to splashdown – was over a duration of 9 days, 1 hour, and 32 minutes, but the effort and discipline behind it spanned years. The takeaway is simple. You won’t have to travel 695,081 miles to achieve your mission. You just need clarity, preparation, discipline, and effort to create your space
Like the United States President John F. Kennedy said in 1962, “We choose to go to the Moon” to address the nation’s space effort, perhaps it is time for you to say, “I choose to go to my own space”.
And, if this has given you some food for thought, you might have earned a real meal too. Here’s the menu on board for the crew. 🙂
Image courtesy: NASA
