Less than a week after the Artemis II crew splashed down off the coast of San Diego, the crew was asked to reflect on the spiritual implications of their experience in space. Commander Reid Wiseman admitted that while he is “not religious,” he sought out a Navy chaplain upon the crew’s return.
The Artemis II crew undertook a lunar flyby mission from April 1-10. The mission was the first of its kind since 1972. The crew set a new record for the furthest any human has traveled from Earth, eclipsing the previous record set by the Apollo 13 crew in 1970.
The crew consisted of four members: Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen.
On Thursday (April 16), the crew sat down for a press conference. While taking questions from reporters, the astronauts remarked that they had not yet had much time to process their experience.
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One reporter asked the crew if their experience in space had given them “a sense of universal connectedness” or a “shift in consciousness.”
Wiseman responded, “Yes.”
“The only thing I can do is just share one quick story,” he continued. Referring to the Navy vessel that the crew boarded after splashdown, Wiseman said, “When I got back on the ship, I’m not really a religious person, but there was just no other avenue for me to explain anything or experience anything.”
“So I asked for the chaplain on the Navy ship just to come visit us for a minute. And when that man walked in—I had never met him before in my life. But I saw the cross on his collar, and I just broke down in tears,” he recounted. “It’s very hard to fully grasp what we just went through.”
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Wiseman said that even though the crew had been back for roughly a week, it had been a week full of medical examinations and debriefings. He added, “We have not had that decompression. We have not had that reflection time. So I’m basing this on what we saw.”
