"I have two Microsoft Outlooks and neither one of those are working"

"I have two Microsoft Outlooks and neither one of those are working" was spoken by Commander Reid Wiseman, an astronaut on Artemis II, while speaking with Mission Control in Houston.

It referred to the popular Microsoft email client program, Microsoft Outlook, describing its failure. While outer space presents its own problems for any technology, this quote resonated on Earth due to the ubiquity of bugs and other errors common to Outlook and other Microsoft products.

Background

Human technology has made many advances since Apollo 17, the last manned flight to leave low Earth orbit. The very first message ever sent between two computers was a mere ten years before that flight, and full-fledged email was still over a decade away.

Context

The Artemis II mission was the first manned spacecraft to leave low Earth orbit in over fifty years. Launched by NASA on April 1, 2026, it was intended to circle the Moon and then return to Earth.

Reid Wiseman was one of just four astronauts selected to crew the spacecraft on this mission. At fifty years of age, he is the oldest of the four—in fact, he is the oldest person to ever leave low Earth orbit—and serves as the Commander of the mission, supervising the other three.

Aftermath

NASA's Ascent Flight Director, Judd Frieling, said that it was a "not uncommon" problem that Wiseman had encountered, adding that "sometimes Outlook has issues getting configured, especially when you don’t have a network that’s directly connected". He then assured reporters that the team was able to fix the issue by remotely reloading some of the files on Wiseman's tablet, a modified Microsoft Surface Pro.

Microsoft later said that the incident was under review.

Many civilians back on Earth found humor in the situation. Data scientist Yael Demedetskaya, from Columbia University, said “Humanity is returning to the Moon. Outlook is still Outlook.”

See also

• Apollo Guidance Computer