Homecoming Book Launch: Artemis II Flew, and So Did This
- ratu nida
- Apr 10
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 10
On April 1, four humans fired Artemis II and blazed toward the moon for the first time since Apollo. And do you know what they called the journey ahead?
"Humanity's lunar homecoming arc". I read those words and had to put my phone down.
If you know me well (and some of you do), you know I have a long-standing affair with the moon.
I have watched it from windows I wasn't sure I'd survive. I have stood under it after therapy, absorbing its light while questioning everything. I have stared at it in the middle of sleepless nights that felt endless. The moon was always there; indifferent in the most comforting way, enormous and unhurried, asking nothing, offering the light I needed in the darkness of my life.
There is a whole chapter about my relationship with the moon in Homecoming. The moon is my cosmic ally. So you can imagine what this week has been.
On April 6, for forty minutes, Artemis II passed behind the moon completely, and all communication with Earth went silent. In that blackout, in that unreachable silence, the four astronauts gathered together and ate maple cream cookies. A small celebration, in the most profound dark.
When they came back into signal, they described what they had seen.
Christina Koch (the first woman to travel this far from Earth in all of human history) said she found herself noticing not only the beauty of the Earth from that distance, but how much blackness there was around it.
I wept at that (I'm not ashamed to say it). And then I thought about us.
Artemis, in Greek mythology, was the goddess of the moon. Of the wilderness. Of the threshold between what is known and what isn't. She was the one who walked at the very edges — of the forest, of the world, of what anyone thought wasn’t possible — and kept going anyway. Not despite the dark, but through the dark. Guided by her own light.
The mission is named for her.
And I keep thinking, this book has been on its own kind of launchpad. There were delays; a publisher change, a cover redesign, legal conversations, weeks when I walked under the sky asking the moon: how long can I sustain this?
But I kept returning to what Commander Reid Wiseman said the moment they broke free of Earth's orbit, when someone asked him how it felt:
"There is nothing normal about this. It is a herculean effort, and we are now just realising the gravity of that."
I have been realising the gravity of this book—of what it asks of me to have written it, and what it asks of you to have trusted it before it was whole—for a very long time.
And now it is ready. "Homecoming" book launch Sydney — 6 May, Gleebooks — is the moment we have both been waiting for.
The book is here and there is a signed copy with your name on it, waiting for you.
You and I, we are Artemises. Both of us walking the edges of what is known and unknown, and keeping going anyway.
The Artemis crew named two craters on the far side of the moon during their flyby.
One they called Integrity: after their spacecraft. One they called Carroll: after Commander Wiseman's late wife.
In the furthest, darkest, most unreachable place any human has ever been, they named something after love and something after wholeness.
Homecoming launches at Gleebooks, Sydney - 6 May 2026
→ Register here and save it in your calendar (it takes 30 seconds).
or Pre-order if you're not in Sydney.Karen Bevan, CEO of Full Stop Australia, wrote the foreword. And Brenda Gaddi, Founder and Executive Director of Women of Colour Australia, will launch me in person. I am still pinching myself that it's real.
It will be intimate. I intend to read the parts I'm afraid of, sit with the questions that tickle our brain and heart, and share a room with people who understand —in their bodies, not just their minds— that coming home to yourself is the bravest journey there is.
Thank you for walking the edges with me, and for being part of the ground crew that got us here. Now come be in the room when we land. 🌙
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