The Hutchinson News: NASA administrator visits Cosmosphere as Artemis II goes to moon

This press release from Senator Jerry Moran (R-KS) was published on 2026-04-21 and titled "The Hutchinson News: NASA administrator visits Cosmosphere as Artemis II goes to moon". It focuses on taxes and touches on the environment, foreign policy.

The Hutchinson News: NASA administrator visits Cosmosphere as Artemis II goes to moon NASA administrator visits Cosmosphere as Artemis II goes to moon Charles Rankin | The Hutchinson News HUTCHINSON, Kan. - Houston, Cape Canaveral and Hutchinson, Kansas. Those are the three cities that NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman will spend time in while the Artemis II mission heads to and from the Moon, the first crewed flight there in more than 50 years. Isaacman visited the Cosmosphere for the first time on the morning of April 6 after an invitation from Sen. Jerry Moran. The Kansas senator wanted Isaacman to see what the senator said the Artemis II crew told him was "the best space museum in the world." The date Isaacman's visit was historic, as that same crew, consisting of Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, were set to fly by the Moon later that evening to become the farthest humans away from Earth in the history of spaceflight. Isaacman awed by display of history at the Cosmosphere From the moment he stepped foot in the building, the administrator said he was taken back by what he saw. The SR-71 Blackbird is displayed in the main lobby of the Cosmosphere and is what the museum was built around. Cosmosphere CEO Jim Remar took Isaacman on a tour of the facility, including seeing students from local Hutchinson schools taking part in educational programming that included two separate "explosions" of liquid oxygen inside Dr. Goddard's Lab. After taking a moment to sign the wall of dignitaries and a photo of his spacewalk while on the private Polaris Dawn mission, Isaacman was taken along for the main attraction, a tour of the Hall of Space Museum. "We have the largest collection of U.S. space artifacts outside of the Smithsonian and the largest Soviet collection outside of Moscow," Remar said. The administrator continued to be in awe, seeing the artifacts which includes actual space-flown pieces and meticulous replicas put together by the Cosmosphere staff. One of those artifacts, a genuine Volga airlock, like the one used by Alexei Leonov during the first spacewalk during the Soviet Voskhod 2 mission, was of particular interest to Isaacman, who made sure to show Sarah Gillis, who joined him on his own spacewalk in 2024. "I've read the history of things like this, but to see it in person is amazing," he said<