NASA astronaut broke down seeing religious cross after returning from 'other-worldly' experience
Some of the Artemis 2 astronauts have apparently returned to Earth changed, with one of the four-person crew apparently experiencing an 'other-worldly' moment before landing back on our little planet.
While it's been 54 years (and counting) since man last stepped foot on the Moon, Artemis 2 was one for the history books as it performed a record-breaking flyby of our natural satellite.
Artemis 2 put the first woman beyond low Earth orbit, celebrated the first Black person to visit the Moon, and broke the record for the furthest the human race has traveled into space.
In the aftermath of their 10-day mission to the far side of the Moon, Reid Wiseman, Jeremy Hansen, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch made quite a splash when they landed in the Pacific Ocean southwest of San Diego and were rescued by the U.S. Navy.
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While Wiseman has said he's not a religious person, he's opened up about a seemingly religious experience when discussing the mission at a press conference.
Discussing his return from space, and a particular moment involving the chaplain of the USS John P. Murtha, Wiseman explained: "I'm not really a religious person, but there was no other avenue for me to explain anything or experience anything. So I asked for the chaplain on the Navy ship to just come visit us for a minute.
“When that man walked in, I'd never met him before in my life, but I saw the cross on his collar, and I just broke down in tears."
Saying it's "very hard to fully grasp what we just went through," Wiseman admitted it's been a gruelling week of medical and physical testing where the crew hasn't had any real reflection time.
Looking back at his time aboard the Orion spacecraft, Wiseman continued: "When the Sun eclipsed behind the Moon, I turned to Victor [Glover], and I said, 'I don't think humanity has evolved to the point of being able to comprehend what we were looking at right now', because it was other-worldly. It was amazing."
Glover said that while he is a religious person, Wiseman's moment with the chaplain was one that was 'really special'.
We've already covered how Wiseman was able to capture the jaw-dropping 'Earthset' moment with an iPhone camera. As a mission specialist, Hansen had his own thoughts on standout moments from the mission and told the crowd: “What kept grabbing my attention, when the lighting was right, and we were looking out the window, is that I kept seeing this depth in the galaxy."
Saying that you view the Moon and the stars from a new perspective, Hansen added: "I've heard Christina talk about this a lot. We're all kind of struck by these things that make us feel small. I had this sense of fragility and feeling small, infinitesimally small, yet this very powerful feeling as a human being, like as a group."
Artemis 2 was the first step in a reinvigorated astronaut program that's set to hopefully put humans back on the Moon with Artemis 4 in 2028. Beyond that, Artemis 5 plans to start construction of a lunar base that will establish a permanent human presence on the Moon.