This NASA Astronaut Shared A Powerful Message From Space On The Artemis II Mission Around The Moon
“And I'm trying to tell you, just trust me: You are special.”
NASA astronaut Victor Glover, part of NASA's Artemis II mission to the moon, sent a powerful message to people on Earth, reminding them “you are more special than you think” as he observed Earth from space.
On Wednesday, April 1, NASA launched the Artemis II, a spaceflight mission carrying four astronauts — Glover, Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen — on a 10-day flyby around the moon.
The mission is a test flight to prepare for future lunar landing missions and marks the first crewed flight to the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.
On Saturday, April 4, CBS interviewed the crew live from space and asked the astronauts whether they had any messages to share about the upcoming Christian holiday of Easter Sunday.
49-year-old Glover, the first Black person to travel around the moon and the pilot of Artemis II, said he didn't have anything planned, but then delivered a moving message.
“Maybe the distance we are from you makes you think what we're doing is special,” Glover said. “But we're the same distance from you. And I'm trying to tell you, just trust me: You are special. In all of this emptiness — this is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe — you have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together.”
He went on to say that on Easter Sunday, it is a good time “to remember where we are, who we are, and that we are the same thing, and that we got to get through this together.”
NASA published the short clip on its social media, which went viral and gained more than 17 million views in a day.
On Monday, April 6, the crew completed the flyby around the far side of the moon, breaking the record for the farthest any human has traveled from Earth, surpassing Apollo 13 in 1970.
The crew is expected to splash down in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of San Diego on Friday, April 10.
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