Vlog 17: Visit the Orion capsule

Uploaded on October 8, 2025

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Vlog 17: Visit the Orion capsule

The Artemis II mission is a historic step forward, being the first crewed test flight in the Artemis campaign. Join CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen in this vlog as he guides you through the Orion capsule, which will take him and his crewmates around the Moon on a nearly 10-day voyage. (Credits: Canadian Space Agency, NASA, Fulwell 73 UK Limited)

So, a lot of people ask me about the size of the capsule and what it's going to be like being cramped in here with four people for nine plus days.

Standing outside the Orion mock-up here at the Johnson Space Center. This gets a lot of use by our team, who are always bringing prototypes in here, fit-checking things, practising procedures.

I have a few minutes. I thought I’d sneak you inside so you can have a look.

All right, so as we head up to the mock-up, you can kind of pretend we're on launch day here.

And this is how we'll find the hatch of the vehicle: it’ll be open, there'll be techs here, helping us to get into the vehicle. And this is the hatch we will go into on launch day.

We're inside the Orion capsule here. This is where we come in to train to figure out how we're going to actually get things done in space, where we're going to put things, how we're going to live, how we're going to move around.

And here we have the seats. So, I'm sitting on top of the commander's seat here. This is Victor’s seat, the pilot, and then you've got two more seats down here for Christina and I. Right now, we have the footrests stowed, just like they will be when we're in space and we don't need seats anymore. And so, we'll have a lot more volume here.

But when we try to crawl in for launch, it's actually a lot more constrained because you've got these footrests here.

Here are the displays which are used to fly the vehicle.

We have four windows there.

This way up towards my head is the pointy end of the rocket. So that's the part that goes forward when we launch off the launch pad.

So, a lot of people ask me about the size of the capsule and what it's going to be like being cramped in here with four people for nine plus days.

And yeah, it's a tiny space. It's about the size of a camper van. However, when you get rid of these foot restraints off the seats, there is quite a bit of free volume in here.

And even as someone who's quite tall, over six feet, I can easily stretch out flat in either direction.

This is the docking hatch tunnel, and it doesn't go very far, but I can even, in 1G, I can even stand up straight in here and have enough room.

So, there's quite a bit of room in the capsule. Of course, there’ll be four of us in here, and we'll fill it up pretty good.

And so right now it is a little bit decluttered. We're going to have a little bit more stuff going on once we get to space. We start unstowing things, setting up cameras, computer equipment that we use for the mission.

Something else that we'll have with us are our spacesuits, those orange launch and entry suits that we use for launch and when we come back. But when we're in space, we have to store them. And they do take up quite a bit of room and the helmets. And so, they'll kind of all be stored off to one side of the capsule.

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