It feels like there have been precious few feel-good stories these days, as President Donald Trump has unleashed worldwide chaos with his ill-planned war in Iran and threats of literal genocide.
In this image provided by NASA, Artemis II crew members, from left, Victor Glover Jeremy Hansen, Reid Wiseman, and Christina Koch, pause to turn the camera around for a selfie midway through their observation of the moon during a lunar flyby on April 6.
But Monday's footage from NASA’s ongoing lunar flyby really scratched an itch for millions of Americans who needed to feel any sort of hope or faith in humanity.
It was truly awe-inspiring to watch those four brave astronauts break the record for the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth. (Frankly, it inspired some jealousy, too. What a time to escape this mess here on our planet.)
The photos they transmitted were spectacular—clear images of the surface of the moon, which has only been seen that close by a few dozen human beings in the roughly 300,000 years our species has existed.
What's more, those four astronauts seem like genuinely good people who like and respect one another, as well as their mission of scientific advancement for the good of society.
I mean, I had a genuine tear in my eye as the crew asked to name a crater after Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman's late wife, Carroll, who died of cancer in 2020.
"There’s a feature in a really neat place on the moon, and it is on the near side-far side boundary. In fact, it’s just on the near side of that boundary, and so at certain times of the moon's transit around Earth, we will be able to see this from Earth,” Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, a member of the Artemis II crew, said from the space capsule.
“And so we lost a loved one, her name was Carroll, the spouse of Reid, the mother of Katie and Ellie,” Hansen continued, his voice breaking. “And if you want to find this one, you look at Glushko, and it's just to the northwest of that, at the same latitude as Ohm. And it's a bright spot on the moon. And we would like to call it Carroll."
There were lighter moments, too, like when a jar of Nutella randomly floated by as the astronauts circled the moon.
It was such a fun little scene that we can even cheer a company for capitalizing on the event.
“Honored to have traveled further than any spread in history. Taking spreading smiles to new heights,” Nutella wrote in a post on X.
But ultimately, while the astronauts are hundreds of thousands of miles away from Earth, not even they could escape the torpid Trump vortex
Late Monday evening, he called the astronauts and rambled about Canadian hockey player Wayne Gretzky. The voyagers had nothing to say and floated around in silence as Trump remained on the line. Awkward!
Still, the Artemis II mission gives us something to be proud of as Americans that's divorced from our horrible leader and the turmoil he's created on this spinning rock we call Earth. At least we have that.
In this image provided by NASA, astronaut and Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch peers out of one of the Orion spacecraft's main cabin windows, looking back at Earth, as the crew travels towards the moon on April 2.
Related | NASA is shooting for the moon. A guide to the Artemis II mission.
