NASA astronaut finds God after returning to Earth

He’s travelled more than 250,000 miles (402,000km) to the moon and back – but astronaut Reid Wiseman said one of the most emotional experiences of his mission was seeing a cross on his return to Earth.

The Artemis II commander, who says he is ‘not religious’, was reflecting on his mammoth mission to space during a press conference yesterday.

One reporter asked the crew whether they had experienced any shift in consciousness following their 10–day journey to the dark side of the lunar surface.

Wiseman confirmed he had, referencing a moment that occurred after the team were picked up by the US Navy following their splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

‘I’m not really a religious person but there was no other avenue for me to explain anything or experience anything,’ he said.

‘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.’

Wiseman said it’s ‘very hard to fully grasp what we just went through’ and in the week since the astronauts came back, they have not had time to process their experience.

‘It was other–worldly and it was amazing,’ he said.

Since the Orion spacecraft splashed down last week, the crew have been going through extensive medical and physical testing.

As well as Wiseman, the team consists of pilot Victor Glover and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen.

They revealed they haven’t really had time to properly reflect on their profound feat, which saw them break the record for the farthest humans have ever travelled from Earth.

‘We’ve not had that decompression, we’ve not had that reflection time,’ Wiseman said.

Some of the incredible moments they witnessed included seeing Earth ‘set’ behind the moon, a rare solar eclipse and observing our home planet suspended in the darkness of space.

‘When the sun eclipsed behind the moon, I turned to Victor and said “I don’t think humanity has evolved to the point of being able to comprehend what we are looking at right now”,’ Wiseman said.

Mission specialist Jeremy Hansen said he has been ‘trying to find words’ to describe the things he saw during the mission.

‘But what kept grabbing my attention – when the lighting was right and we were looking out the window – is that I kept seeing this depth to the galaxy,’ he said. ‘That was mind–blowing for me. The sense I had of fragility and feeling infinitesimally small.’

The cognitive shift that astronauts experience when viewing Earth from space is called the ‘Overview Effect’.

This is characterised by an overwhelming sense of awe, unity and a deeper connection to the planet.

Astronaut Edgar Mitchell became the sixth person to walk on the moon during the Apollo mission in 1971.

After returning to Earth he famously said: ‘You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it.

‘From our there on the moon, international politics looks so petty.’

Despite the profoundness of their mission, astronaut Christina Koch revealed the team have been ‘sleeping great’ since they got back.

But she said: ‘Every time I woke up during the first few days I thought I was floating. I truly thought I was floating and I had to convince myself I wasn’t.’

She explained that she even let go of a shirt in the air, expecting it to float in front of her. ‘It actually surprised me [when it dropped],’ she said.

Wiseman also revealed a smoke detector went off on the second–to–last day of the mission, when the team were still 80,000 miles (129,000km) from home.

‘It was tense for a few minutes until we got things reconfigured,’ he said.

When asked about the Orion capsule, where the crew spent the entirety of the mission, he said: ‘There are always things we need to improve – there are ways we need to do better living in space and ways this machine needs to be improved.

‘But in my own personal opinion, they could put the Artemis III Orion on the space launch system tomorrow and launch it, and the crew would be in great shape.’

The next Artemis mission will see astronauts test commercial lunar landers in Earth’s orbit before the next big step – returning a crew to the surface of the moon by 2028.