Victor Wembanyama Sends Video Message to Artemis II Astronauts on Historic NASA Moon Mission

As the Artemis II prepared for its launch on Wednesday, one very special fan from the NBA wished its crew the best of luck.

"Hey, I'm Victor Wembanyama and I play basketball in the NBA," the San Antonio Spurs superstar said during NASA's live broadcast of the launch (around the 32:11 mark on the countdown clock). "But I'm not only interested in shooting hoops. I'm also interested in shooting stars, dark matter, and all other types of astronomical phenomena. And to the Artemis II astronauts who are shooting for the moon, I wish them good luck and godspeed."

Wemby is no stranger to NASA:

His love of space and other cosmic topics is also no secret. When Wemby won the NBA Rookie of the Year award in 2024, he was presented the award at the planetarium on the campus of San Antonio College and stuck around to watch a presentation on dark matter.

"Dark matter is a mass we can't see, but we know it's there because it's got influence on gravitational pulls and the speed of gravitational orbits in every galaxy," he said at the time. "Its presence inside galaxies is five times higher than regular seeable matter, so it's a huge mystery. We can't see it. We can't observe it, but we can observe its influence. This is dark matter. Very sci-fi."

So Wednesday's message to the Artemis II astronauts was a very Wemby moment.