As the month comes to a close, I wanted to take a moment and revisit a major national accomplishment. On April 1st Artemis II was launched, sending four astronauts around the moon and back in ten days. Traveling to space is always an incredible human and technological feat. For those of us who aren’t NASA engineers, astronauts, or space research enthusiasts, it can remain a mysterious and fantastical operation.
Ironically, an event that involves traveling hundreds of thousands of miles away from Earth’s surface has the power to bring us back to the ground through a shift in perspective – in every sense of the word.
Imagine what it would be like to see the Earth. Not in photo, not in a virtual reality simulation, but a real three-dimensional Earth. Imagine how small you might feel, how amazed, how petrified, how moved. And just like that you could be forever changed.
But of course the majority of us will never have that experience. However, the ones who do can let us in on what it could be like. Reflecting on the views from space, NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman said, “I know there’s no adjectives. I’m going to need to invent some new ones to describe what we are looking at out this window.” Through the eyes of NASA astronaut Christina Koch “Earth was just this lifeboat hanging in the universe.”
One of the most impactful messages to remember came from Artemis II pilot Victor Glover on behalf of himself and his fellow astronauts: “Trust us you look amazing, you look beautiful, and from up here you also look like one thing…we’re all one people.”
It might sound naive, sweet, and nothing more. However Glover’s words aren’t any less true. In many ways we all are “one people.” Of course we are an incredibly diverse species full of variation and unique contributions. We live our own lives, exist in our own communities, grow up in our own cultures. Yet, we are also all mortal inhabitants of one planet. When we can remember and hold both realities we give ourselves the opportunity to be astronauts for a moment, and if we’re lucky, that moment will stay awhile.
On paper it’s a small thing, a quote from an astronaut that could be forgotten with the turnover of the news cycle. In practice, the quote becomes an articulation of a philosophy. And we get to choose how we receive it, or don’t. The philosophy is one of hope, a hope for a union, and hope itself is active. It doesn’t happen to you, it’s a choice you make everyday to fight for something you believe in even when the surroundings look impossibly dismal. In a sea of darkness a green and blue sphere may look absurd if you strip it of all meaning, but it could also look pretty magical.
