Moon Magic

How four astronauts brought the world unity and joy

We are going for our families

We are going for our teammates

We are going for all of humanity.

Good luck, Godspeed, Artemis II; let’s go.

Are you still giddy from seeing the four plucky astronauts circle the moon? I think we will be for some time. The voyage was historic; it was thrilling and moving and couldn’t have gone more smoothly. (Well, except for the toilet problem.) They traveled deeper into space than any human had ever been. They flew over the dark side of the moon, causing our hearts to stop as they lost contact with Earth. They snapped photos from the five windows of their spacecraft, getting to more than 4,000 miles from the moon’s surface.

But they didn’t just bring us pretty pictures. The four-person crew brought themselves. In NASA’s history, I don’t think we’ve ever had such a strong emotional connection to our astronauts. They created an Artemis II morning playlist, with songs by David Bowie and Chappell Roan, that went viral. Blending cultures, Canadian mission specialist Jeremy Hansen shared the “Seven Sacred Laws” from his Indigenous elders on TikTok. Pilot Victor Glover, the first black astronaut to fly to the moon, and mission specialist Christina Koch, the first woman to journey there, gave us milestones to celebrate. They showed little boys and girls everywhere what was possible when you dream big, when you see someone like yourself soaring in space. Commander Reid Wiseman openly shed tears, after the crew named a crater after his wife, Carroll, who died of cancer six years ago. The astronauts then hugged.

Glover and Koch snapped many of the images of Earth and the moon that rocketed to us from more than 200,000 miles away. Using iPhones and digital cameras, they took us along for the ride. Needless to say, this did not happen in 1972, when we last went to the moon. (Which apparently is now up for debate that we actually went. Give me a break.) On this voyage, they showed us our fragile blue planet hanging in space. They showed us the spectacle of a solar eclipse. We saw “Earthset,” the blue and white crescent of the Earth rising above the moon. And we peeked inside the tiny capsule where the crew lived and worked 10 days.

The voyage was incredible for science. We obviously don’t know yet how incredible. But it was also good for our souls. For a beautiful week and a half, we had a respite from suffering and war. All over the world, people came together no matter their country, their politics, their language or their religion for 10 days of moon magic. For once our eyes were glued to our screens in awe, not anxiety.

When Orion opened its parachutes and floated down into the Pacific, I was in San Diego. I would have preferred to see the splashdown from the deck of the U.S.S. Murtha, but the Navy didn’t invite me. Instead, I was sitting outdoors at an Italian restaurant a few blocks from where I grew up, watching on my husband’s iPhone. I was so worried about the crew as they hurtled to Earth in a fireball, I could barely focus on my pasta. My husband was running a half marathon along San Diego Bay the next morning—hence the carbs—and I was thinking about that, too. So when the capsule landed right on time, right side up, and in almost the exact right spot, and the helicopters plucked the astronauts from the Orion, lifting them back into space, I was overjoyed.

The next morning, I rose before dawn and walked under a deep violet sky with my husband to the start of the race. It was a scene, with thousands of kids, parents, teenagers, friends, gen-Xers and millennials in running shorts, sports bras, tank tops, HOKAs and Nikes. Some young women had dusted their cheeks with glitter. Four young women had worn the same pink running outfit. Like the night before the mood was joyful and electric.

Here’s a photo of the horizon I took that morning.

Meanwhile, the astronauts returned to Houston and their anxious families.

In a press conference, Reid Wiseman tried to describe the profound nature of their experience. “Victor, Christina and Jeremy, we are, we are bonded forever, and no one down here is ever going to know what the four of us just went through,” he said. “And it was the most special thing that will ever happen in my life.”