Apollo 15 astronaut Jim Irwin walked on the moon in 1971, came home, quit NASA, and spent the next 20 years preaching the gospel.
Now the commander of America's first lunar mission in 53 years just did something almost nobody saw coming.
Reid Wiseman came back from the moon and did something nobody expected from a man who said he wasn't religious.
Reid Wiseman Asked for a Navy Chaplain and Then Could Not Explain Why
The Artemis II crew splashed down in the Pacific Ocean after nearly ten days in space – the farthest any humans have ever traveled from Earth.
Once aboard the USS John P. Murtha recovery ship, Wiseman did something that surprised even him.
"I'm not really a religious person, but there was just no other avenue for me to explain anything or to experience anything, so I asked for the chaplain on the Navy ship to just come visit us for a minute," Wiseman told reporters at Johnson Space Center. "And when that man walked in – I'd never met him before in my life – but I saw the cross on his collar, and I just broke down in tears."
"It's very hard to fully grasp what we just went through," he added.
Wiseman described one moment in particular – when the sun eclipsed behind the moon during the lunar flyby.
"I turned to Victor and said, 'I don't think humanity has evolved to the point of being able to comprehend what we're looking at right now,' because it was otherworldly."
The crew named a crater on the moon's surface "Carroll," after Wiseman's late wife.
Victor Glover Read His Bible From the Moon and Delivered an Easter Message Nobody Expected
Pilot Victor Glover was lying in his bunk when the chaplain came in.
Glover – a longtime Sunday School teacher who carried a Bible on the mission – said his reaction was identical to Wiseman's, just coming from a different starting point.
"I am a religious person," Glover told reporters, "but everything else is the same."
Glover had already been broadcasting his faith during the mission.
On Easter Sunday, with the Orion capsule 252,756 miles from Earth – farther than any humans had ever traveled in history – a CBS News reporter asked him if he had an Easter message.
Glover said he hadn't prepared anything.
Then he delivered one of the most striking statements ever broadcast from deep space.
"You're on a spaceship called Earth that was created to give us a place to live in the universe, in the cosmos," Glover said. "In all of this emptiness – this is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe – you have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together."
Then, just before the crew lost radio contact rounding the far side of the moon, Glover broadcast his final message.
He quoted Jesus on the greatest commandment: love God with everything you have, and love your neighbor as yourself.
"We still feel your love from Earth," Glover told listeners around the world, "and to all of you down there on Earth, and around Earth, we love you from the Moon."
The Apollo Astronaut Who Quit NASA to Preach the Gospel After Walking on the Moon
Jim Irwin walked on the moon in 1971 and described feeling the power of God in a way he had never experienced before.
After resigning from NASA the following year, Irwin founded an evangelical organization and spent two decades on the road telling church groups what the moon had shown him: "Jesus walking on the earth is more important than man walking on the moon."
That wasn't an isolated reaction. Apollo 8's crew broadcast a reading from Genesis on Christmas Eve 1968 while orbiting the moon, and Buzz Aldrin quietly conducted communion on the lunar surface during Apollo 11.
The pattern across 55 years of space exploration is consistent: when human beings travel far enough from Earth to see it whole – a fragile blue oasis suspended in absolute blackness – something happens to them that no training prepares them for.
Researchers who study what they call the "overview effect" note that the experience hits non-religious astronauts just as hard as devout ones – and that no amount of training prepares any of them for it.
NASA and the American taxpayers just sent four human beings farther into space than anyone in history.
Two of them came home talking about God.
The third brought a Bible.
The media will tell you Artemis II was about heat shields and trajectory burns and distance records.
The astronauts who actually went keep telling you something else.
Sources:
- Ryan Foley, "Non-religious NASA astronaut 'broke down in tears' seeing cross after Artemis II mission," The Christian Post, April 18, 2026.
- "Artemis II Astronaut Victor Glover Shares Easter Faith Message," Fox News, April 5, 2026.
- "Victor Glover Faith Message After Historic Artemis II Mission," Metro Voice News, April 16, 2026.
- "NASA to Host Artemis II Crew Postflight News Conference," NASA.gov, April 15, 2026.
- "Colonel James Irwin: Creationist Astronaut," Institute for Creation Research.
- "Artemis II astronauts detail 'intense' reentry in interview with ABC News' David Muir," ABC News, April 16, 2026.