Thought For The Day – Tuesday 14^th April 2026 – To The Moon… And Back

In the last two weeks, the crew of “Artemis II” travelled to the far side of the moon… and back.

They journeyed 252, 756 miles from the Earth, the furthest any humans have ever travelled from this small planet.

They “boldly went where no one had gone before”, to the far side of the Moon.

They flew so high, and so far, and so fast,  that, on their mission,  they lost contact with the Earth for forty minutes.

They were alone in Space.

As such, their safe return to their home planet was perhaps most the challenging aspect of the journey.

The four-person crew was:

Commander Reid Wiseman;  pilot Victor Glover;  mission specialist Christina Koch, from N.A.S.A.; and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen, from the Canadian Space Agency.

It took many, many years for them to:  achieve their dreams; to go to the place they saw in the sky.

This crew included the first woman and the first person of colour on a lunar mission.

As they flew past the Moon, they remembered, Carroll,  the  wife of Commander Wiseman.  Carroll passed away from cancer.  In a very moving moment, they named a bright and beautiful part of the Moon after Carroll.

On their scientific mission, as well as conducting experiments in Space, of which the human experience of mission itself was to a very large extent, by definition, with risks minimised,  one of those, inspirational images were taken, and published by N.A.S.A., like the ones above.

In all these endeavours, thoughts turn to the future possibilities, and potential challenges, presented by space in future generations.  Some may believe the massive financial cost, for example,  outweighs any benefits.

The Artemis space program was named after the Greek goddess of the Moon and the hunt, who was the twin sister of Apollo.

Previous moon missions, of the 1960s and 1970s,  were called Apollo missions.

Incredibly, the technology used to land astronauts on the Moon then is in the mobile telephones you handed in, and collected, yesterday.  Life progresses fast.

But, of course, as we learn from Mary Shelley’s novel  “Frankenstein”, published in 1818, discovery and technology also need responsibility and ethics.

And History is a profound teacher.

The Artemis crew gave a name “Integrity” to their Orion spacecraft.

The crew chose “Integrity” because this word represents the core foundation of trust, respect, honesty, and humility shared by the crew and the global teams of engineers, scientists, and technicians integral to the mission.

It also referred to the “integrated effort” required to bring more together than 300,000 spacecraft components, as well as a huge team of people, all doing their job to an impeccable degree, which saw 12 nations working together.

“To The Moon…And Back” in 6 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uxg99Q6-tU