MORRISON — It was a sellout crowd at Red Rocks Amphitheatre on Monday morning. No, that’s not a typo: Morning.

Nearly 10,000 people packed into the storied music venue to welcome the four Artemis II astronauts for an event celebrating their lunar flyby mission in April and Colorado’s contribution to it.

Astronauts Victor Glover, Christina Koch, Reid Wiseman and Jeremy Hansen answered questions about the mission from audience members after a media roundtable. When they came on stage all four were taken aback by the sheer volume of humanity present in one place.

“We’re a little overwhelmed,” Wiseman said right after the crew took the stage. Later in the program, Koch asked the audience to participate in call and response, where she said moon and the audience said “joy” back.

The crowd Monday jubilantly repeated “joy” back to Koch. There were three calls and three responses, causing a wide smile to form on her face as she felt the intensity of Colorado’s “Moon joy.”

The state’s contribution to the Artemis II mission was indeed significant.

There are more than 250 companies and 14,000 jobs in Colorado connected to the program and the recent mission, respectively. One of the companies, Lockheed Martin Space, designed and built the crew capsule, Orion, which the four astronauts called home for about 10 days.

Orion is one of four major space launch capsules in use by NASA. The agency also relies on SpaceX’s Dragon, which Glover, the Artemis II mission pilot, is well acquainted with: He flew it as part of his mission to the International Space Station in 2020.

“It’s sleek, on the inside it looks very modern,” he said referring to Dragon. “But it wasn’t the best place to sleep and live, and the bathroom was right out in the middle.” Orion has a private bathroom area, which the crew members appreciated.

“(I was) pleasantly surprised just how amazing (Orion) was to live in,” Glover said. “It was a small space, but it was probably the nicest tent that I’ve ever camped in.”

Orion has 30% more habitable space than the Apollo capsules that first carried NASA astronauts to the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Lockheed says it is the only crew-rated craft capable of flying to and from the moon and is also an integral part of the company’s vision for landing humans on Mars.

The four astronauts flew 252,756 miles away from Earth, further into deep space than anyone before them. The Artemis missions seek to ultimately build a permanent human presence on the moon. This may open new economic, scientific and exploration opportunities, NASA has said.

The moon is a promising frontier, according to the Colorado Springs-based Space Foundation. In its Global Space Economy report, the Space Foundation found that “commercial lunar transportation and related services” generated about $364 million in revenue last year.

“Commercial lunar services remain heavily dependent on government demand today, but the market is expected to diversify over time,” the report said. “Planned activities include communications networks, navigation services, surface mobility, power generation, resource prospecting and eventually resource extraction.”

Colorado is expected to benefit greatly from the expanding space and lunar economy as home to one of the largest aerospace economies in the nation. In addition to Lockheed Martin, the state is home to Lunar Outpost — headquartered in Golden — which was recently tapped to build a new generation of lunar rovers.

One of the ultimate destinations for NASA and the space community is Mars. Artemis is an important step on that journey, said Lori Glaze, the associate administrator of NASA’s Human Spaceflight Directive.

“We’re now in the early phases of Moonbase to identify key missions that are going to land on the surface of the moon … to teach us how we’re going to live and work on the surface of any foreign body,” she said Monday. “Eventually, we want to get to Mars, but before we can take that leap, we’ve got to learn.”

For now, the pace of launches for the Artemis program is accelerating.

On March 24, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman shuffled the program somewhat, adding another launch between Artemis II and the planned moon landing in 2028. It’s meant to test lunar landers designed by SpaceX and Blue Origin.

But Artemis is not solely a U.S. endeavor. In fact, the U.S. along with seven other nations developed the Artemis Accords, a common set of principles to enhance the “governance of the civil exploration and use of outer space,” according to NASA.

Since being created in 2020, more than 70 countries have signed the accords, demonstrating their commitments to their “shared vision of peaceful space cooperation,” the State Department said.

That’s not lost on Hansen.

Artemis II was his first mission in space and he became the first Canadian to leave low earth orbit as a member of the Canadian Space Agency. Hansen said programs like Artemis show “your excellence across the globe,” and pursing big goals gives the nation an opportunity to continue to shine.

He called Artemis and its efforts toward international collaboration an “extraordinary leadership challenge.”

“We have to collaborate, we have to work together,” he said. “You are showing that that is possible on the world stage, and you should celebrate.”