As the crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission made history by traveling farther from Earth than any humans before, students at Palo Alto High School say the mission’s impact goes beyond science and into global cooperation, representation and humanity’s place in the universe.

The crew — Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover and Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen — represented several historic firsts, including the first African American, first woman and first non-American to travel into deep space.

According to senior Talia Boneh, seeing female representation in space is important to girls all over the world.

“It is so cool to see female representation in a space mission that is as major and anticipated as the Artemis II mission,” Boneh said. “That kind of representation is so important for many girls of all ages around the world to see other models or just to have role models to look up to and to see what people are doing.”

Similarly, senior Motoko Iwata said seeing the diverse representation on the mission was encouraging.

“Having a woman go that far into space is really inspiring and shows that the world is moving towards setting up more positive role models,” Iwata said. “When it comes to looking at a mission that is taking us so far into space, it just shows us how insignificant Earth is and how, from the scale of the universe, we’re kind of all just one person.”

According to Junior Owen McGraw, it was motivating to see the crew of the mission.

“It’s great, considering before, it was just predominantly the same demographic of white males,” McGraw said. “It’s really cool to see different people being able to have amazing opportunities.”

Beyond representation, students also pointed to the mission’s international collaboration as a key achievement. According to senior Duncan Sego, one of the biggest successes of the mission was the collaboration between Canada and the U.S.

“It was a combined effort between Canada and the U.S., which I thought was really cool,” Sego said.“We’re now starting to cooperate more with the world in terms of space stuff and that really removes a lot of limitations around space exploration, so it’s really exciting that we’re cooperating in other countries.”

Artemis II, a 10-day mission that took place from April 1 to 11, marked the first crewed mission of NASA’s Artemis program and the first time humans traveled beyond low-Earth orbit since the 1972 Apollo 17 mission. On April 6, the crew broke the record for the farthest distance traveled from Earth during a human spaceflight.

The mission also reflects growing international cooperation through agreements such as the Artemis Accords, a framework established in 2020 to guide peaceful space exploration. As part of this collaboration, the Canadian Space Agency contributed key technologies, including robotics such as the upcoming Canadarm3 system for the lunar Gateway station. It secured a seat for Canadian astronaut Hansen on the mission.

One of the most significant scientific outcomes of the Artemis II mission, according to space enthusiast and junior Xander Deisseroth, was the unprecedented imaging of the Moon’s far side, an area historically difficult to capture in detail.

“We got some really good pictures of the dark side of the moon, which have been really hard for us to get,” Deisseroth said. “It’s something we thought wasn’t doable or something that seemed impossible, and we did it. It’s just another sort of really high bar that we set for ourselves and have just recently managed to clear.”

According to Iwata, this mission was remarkable not only technologically but also in the unity it brought.

“When the world is kind of divided right now, having people come together was really awesome, and it was groundbreaking both in the sense that humanity went further than we’ve ever gone,” Iwata said. “Socially, we’ve also progressed further. It was an achievement that wasn’t just for a single country or a single person, but for humanity as a whole.”