I know this one may be hard to believe, but I’ve been to the moon.

It was back in 2009. Now you might be thinking, the last visit to the moon was Apollo 17 back in 1972, and this is 37 years later, this didn’t happen. And to that I would say, yes, NASA last visited the moon in 1972. But the US Government has made other trips.

Now how did we pull this off? Well we used the Hubble telescope as a cover story. All of those ‘servicing visits’ over the years? Yeah, we used those opportunities to stage various parts of our rocket until the final visit in 2009 by Atlantis took up the crew capsule with a few of us aboard. As we approached Hubble, we joined up with our vehicle, Atlantis gave us a push, then they turned on the cameras for the world to see the shuttle approach the telescope. Perfect story.

Anyway, about 4 days later we got to the moon and landed around the South Pole because they thought it might have water there. It does, but due to the high tritium in the water, it tastes like ash. This was enough for us to survive for the 3 weeks it took to make sure the venture was even possible.

If you’ve ever heard the stories from the Apollo missions, that dust gets everywhere. I mean *everywhere*. More on this later.

After our time on the moon, we lifted off and managed a tricky rendezvous with the ISS. We left a few of our ship’s parts behind, which are now a part of the America section. Then we hoped on board an ’empty’ Soyuz for a landing in Kazakhstan. After going through this landing, I fully understand why the Artemis missions opted for a water landing, it was not fun. On a side note, did you know they carry a shotgun on the Soyuz? The wildlife is so dangerous in that area that they send you to space with a firearm just in case you land off target.

After we got back, we had to stay in special pods for about 6 days. This was because of that moon dust and the desire to retrieve it out of the everywhere mentioned earlier.