A week after splashing down in the Pacific Ocean and breaking the record for the furthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth, Artemis II commander Reed Wiseman sought a Navy chaplain. He had never met that man before. When the priest came in and Wiseman saw the cross on his collar, he cried.
“I’m not really a religious person,” Wiseman said publicly, “but there was no other way for me to explain anything or experience anything.”
The view of the earth that language could not capture
The Artemis II mission, piloted by Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, took its four astronauts further from Earth than any humans before them. What he saw on the way is beyond easy description.
Seeing the Sun eclipsed by the Moon, Wiseman remarked to Glover midway through his mission, “I don’t think humanity has evolved to the extent of being able to understand what we are seeing now.” Jeremy Hansen, a mission specialist, revealed that he was constantly returning to the windows because he had the feeling that he was very small within the vastness of the galaxy.
They were also able to see the Earth setting behind the Moon, which humans had never had the pleasure of seeing before.
It has a label: Observation Effect. The term refers to a documented change in cognition experienced by astronauts when observing Earth from space, and is characterized by immediate awe, a feeling of oneness with everything and everyone, and a deep awareness of how fragile the Earth is.
Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who became the sixth Moon astronaut, described his experience after his 1971 mission with the statement, “You develop an instant global consciousness, an orientation to people, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world and a compulsion to do something about it.” Artemis II crew members currently use the same words as those they found.
However, this is not the only adjustment. According to Christina Koch, in the first few days after landing her body was still not ready to accept the presence of gravity. “Every time I woke up I felt like I was floating,” Koch said. “I really thought I was floating and I had to convince myself I wasn’t.” Coach threw a shirt away, expecting it to float into the air, but he was surprised when it fell to the ground.
All that aside, the astronauts are apparently sleeping well. The tests the crew conducted immediately after landing gave them little opportunity to reflect on their experience. “We haven’t had that decompression,” Wiseman admitted. “We don’t have that time to think.”
