After splashdown, Reid Wiseman asked to see the ship\u2019s chaplain \u2014 and broke down at the sight of the cross.<\/p>\n
In an emotional moment during a press conference Thursday, the Artemis II astronauts offered a glimpse of their first thoughts after returning to Earth following their historic mission around the moon. <\/p>\n
After splashdown, the four crew members were taken to a U.S. Navy ship for medical evaluation, and although he doesn\u2019t consider himself a religious person, commander Reid Wiseman requested to see the ship\u2019s chaplain. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not really a religious person, but there was just no other avenue for me to explain anything or to experience anything, so I just asked for the Navy chaplain to come visit us for a minute,\u201d Wiseman shared.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen that man walked in \u2014 I\u2019d never met him before in my life, but I saw the cross on his collar, and I just broke down in tears,\u201d Wiseman said during the NASA press conference in Houston. \u201cIt\u2019s very hard to fully grasp what we just went through.\u201d <\/p>\n
Since being home, the crew has been in and out of facilities for testing, and they have not yet had the opportunity to \u201cdecompress\u201d or reflect on the mission in its entirety.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sun eclipsed behind the moon,\u201d said Wiseman. \u201cI turned to Victor and I said I don\u2019t think humanity has evolved to the point of being able to comprehend what we are looking at right now, because it was otherworldly and it was amazing.\u201d <\/p>\n
Artemis II crew pilot Victor Glover responded: \u201cThe only thing I will add is I am a religious person, but everything else is the same.\u201d <\/p>\n
Glover reiterated Wiseman\u2019s point, saying they haven\u2019t had much time to contemplate all they have experienced.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t spent a lot of time processing all of this. I will say it was just a very intense moment, because we had never seen or felt this before. Everything was important, every noise, every mechanism,\u201d the Christian astronaut said.<\/p>\n
NASA\u2019s Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule had a successful mission, but tensions mounted during the final descent for Glover, Wiseman, Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, as the space capsule had faced scrutiny for heat shield concerns. <\/p>\n
Glover recounted the moments of re-entry into the atmosphere: \u201cI could tell we were in a fireball,\u201d he said, thinking, \u201cIs it supposed to be that big?\u201d<\/p>\n
Koch said, \u201cI was completely overcome\u201d when the hatch finally opened after landing in the water.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just screamed. I was so happy. It was just pure elation and just a visceral, emotional reaction to not only being home, but people there coming to us and bringing us out \u2014 just unspeakable joy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked about the moment he learned one crater of the moon was to be named after his late wife, Reid Wiseman said, \u201cI thought it was the most beautiful thing I\u2019d heard in my entire life. She was an amazing human being, and she\u2019s the mother of my two daughters. And what man on this planet deserves a gift like that \u2014 to have your crew be so thoughtful and to do something so caring and so deep and so meaningful.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Artemis II crew returns as living history, having traveled farther from Earth than any human being before them. They saw the far side of the moon and witnessed a solar eclipse from the heavens \u2014 feats once thought impossible. Yet, after touching the furthest reaches of human travel, their first instinct was to reach for the divine. May the images and video from this mission lead us to do the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After splashdown, Reid Wiseman asked to see the ship\u2019s chaplain \u2014 and broke down at the sight of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[504,258174,7042,79,193,9175],"class_list":["post-591219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-artemis","tag-divine-revelation","tag-moon","tag-science","tag-space","tag-space-exploration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}