Artemis II has successfully completed its 10-day mission and what a mission it was! It was the first crewed flight toward the moon in over fifty years. They traveled farther from the Earth (250,000 miles) than anyone in history. And we were introduced to words like earthrise and earthset (MS Word keeps telling me it should be two words), lunar flyby, and universal waste management system ( toilet).
Just as interesting were the different perspectives regarding the flight. NPR’s Scott Simon noted the contrast between the everyday launch of rockets bringing dismemberment and death and the ones that go “into the heavens on missions of discovery.” He spoke of how astronauts over the years “tell us how beholding the earth from outer space can shake the human soul, and make us wonder where we fit in the universe.”
There were issues with heat shield and whether it would function correctly during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. (The heat shield on Artemis 1 cracked during reentry). One former astronaut compared the situation to those of Columbia and Challenger. Others pointed out how the Artemis program is years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.
All in all though, I think the mission was an overwhelming success. It took our eyes off ourselves, reminding us of the vastness of the cosmos, and the blessedness of our planet. And that brings us to the person who I think had the best perspective on the Artemis II mission—one of the astronauts, Victor Glover. Glover is a follower of Jesus who’s obviously spent many years thinking about the ways that faith, science, and space travel interconnect. Here’s some comments he made during the mission.
When I read the Bible and I look at all of the amazing things that were done for us, who were created, you have this amazing place, this spaceship. You guys are talking to us because we’re in a spaceship really far from Earth. But you’re on a spaceship called Earth that was created to give us a place to live in the universe, in the cosmos.
I think maybe the distance we are from you makes you think what we’re doing is special, but we’re the same distance from you. And I’m trying to tell you, just trust me, you are special. In all of this emptiness — this is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe — you have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist (in) together.
I think as we go into Easter Sunday thinking about all the cultures all around the world —whether you celebrate it or not, whether you believe in God or not — this is an opportunity for us to remember where we are, who we are and that we are the same thing. And that we got to get through this together.
You don’t have to travel to the other side of the moon to appreciate the wisdom in those words.
A Taste of Grace with Bruce Green 