"Copy, Moon Joy"

Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." John 20. 19 - 31

As the child of a naval aviator who participated in astronaut rescues from the sea over the years, I have followed space exploration for a long time. However, I have no memory of such joy coming from space as we have seen on this Artemis II mission. As a local feature writer in Jacksonville said this morning, "Our space news is better than earth news."

From the first interviews of the four astronauts on their mission in the Integrity (the name the crew gave their spacecraft) there was a tone of peace and hope that seems to have escaped many of us on earth. When asked what was the greatest take away from the trip so far as they orbited the moon, mission specialist Christina Koch said, "our camaraderie...what it means to be part of a community." In response to one of the descriptions of their space joie de vivre, mission control, NASA officer Jacki Mahaffey laughed and responded: "Copy, moon joy."

And then in the first interview of the crew on earth, Christina Koch went on to say,

"A crew means being inescapably, beautifully, dutifully linked"...it consists of people working together with the same purpose, willing to sacrifice for each other, and holding each other accountable."

and she declared "Planet Earth, you are a crew".

May we on Planet Earth live into her definition of crew and hear the words of Jesus from the heavens saying, "Peace be with you!"

Artemis II crew reflects emotionally on lunar mission after safe return: 'Bonded forever'