‘Planet Earth. You. Are. A. Crew.’
The Orion service module was built by the European Space Agency.
The Canadian Space Agency shared an astronaut.
The launch control center was at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA’s Mission Control Center logged in at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
And in Huntsville, Alabama, control rooms at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center were “actively supporting real-time mission operations in lunar orbit as part of the agency’s Artemis II mission.”
In other words, what we watched unfold the first two weeks in April was an international and multistate effort, teamwork that made the dream work.
The astronauts included a widower raising two daughters and three individuals who made history as the first non-American, the first person of color, and the first woman to venture beyond the Moon.
Reid Wiseman, Jeremy Hansen, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch. The visual images were inspiring, but more so was the chemistry and the joy that the four Artemis II astronauts naturally conveyed when we saw their faces and heard their words.
Someone referred to them as poets.
Time and time again, the Good Lord sends us moments and people who revive our faith in mankind.
When I scroll past yet another image of a Lebanese child being carried out from under bombed rubble, I lean in to Glover’s words from space. “You don’t see borders, you don’t see religious lines, you don’t see political boundaries. All you see is Earth and you see that we are way more alike than we are different.”
When I observe state and federal officials unable to accomplish common sense legislation because of partisan politics, I come back to Hansen’s words that “our purpose on the planet as humans is to find joy, in lifting others up by creating solutions together.”
When I read a post announcing a threat to obliterate a civilization, Koch’s message upon returning to earth gives me hope.
“A crew is a group that is in it all the time, no matter what, that is stroking together every minute with the same purpose, that is willing to sacrifice silently for each other, that gives grace, that holds accountable. A crew has the same cares and the same needs, and a crew is inescapably, beautifully, dutifully linked.”
May we aspire to be worthy crew members on this planet that God gave to all of us. It is, as Koch said, “the lifeboat” in the vast darkness of the universe.