“We can finally breathe.”
I look up at my girlfriend, furrowing my brows in question as she turns her phone towards me. In the vast blue of the Pacific Ocean that plays on the screen, a tiny, small shuttle bobs in the water. Red and white parachutes float in the wind, landing, and rippling among the waves. “They made it home!?,” I ask, sitting up and grabbing her phone. She nodded. I smiled. We both cried.
The crew of Artemis II had safely returned to Earth, carrying the beauty of the stars back with them.
Since its launch nine days ago, I have carefully followed humanity’s voyage back to space. Marking the first trip of its kind in more than half a century, NASA’s Artemis II mission brought humans back to the Moon. During their journey, crew members Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jermey Hansen, would become figures in space history, traveling further than any humans have gone before.
In a truly cosmic way, or just possibly being a product of human curiosity, the topic of space has always felt strangely uniting. It is as if we all had solar system mobiles as newborns; the rotation of the universe being our first form of comfort. “Don’t cry,” once said the Moon to each of us. “I’ll watch over you as you sleep.”
Whatever the explanation might be, admiring the unknowns that exist past our atmosphere feels ingrained within all of us. We huddle together, even travel, to admire the moments when the universe calls us together. “This won’t happen again for another 300 years,” I remember saying to my friends as we watched the 2024 solar eclipse, our fingers splayed in the grass, our necks craned towards the sky. And as I looked around, professors and students, friends and lovers, all joined on Earth, watching the Moon cover the Sun, I couldn’t help but hear the calling comfort of the universe again.
“How lucky are we?” was all I could say, blinking away a tear under the protective eyewear.
Two years later, Artemis II’s mission has brought a similar surge of admiration. We seem to have reentered an era of space curiosity, or at least an acknowledgement of science fiction. Just a few weeks before Artemis II’s takeoff, Project Hail Mary, a film with a heavy space travel influence, was quickly becoming, and now is, one of the biggest blockbuster successes of the year. Though I’m sure Ryan Gosling’s portrayal as a nerdy scientist is captivating (I still haven’t seen it…), a fictional glimpse is only temporary. It is, however, the reminder that we all need. An encouragement to walk out of the theater, and maybe, for the first time in a while, look up, and appreciate the beauty of what looms overhead.
In reflection, Project Hail Mary was merrily foreplay in scope of Artemis II’s mission, and between the two, humans have shifted in our nihilistic corners of safety. “We live on a spinning rock in space; Nothing matters.” We convince ourselves; I have heard this saying more times than I can count. A moment of escape, an easy dismissal of grief in the reluctance of acknowledgment.
When, actually, everything matters. And the more you look, the more love you’ll find, back and forth, and back again. All the way to the Moon.