Artemis II’s crew sent a heartfelt Easter message to the world as they approached the moon Sunday— a remarkable echo of a Christmas address given by the mission’s closest cousin in space history, Apollo 8.
“No matter your faith or religion, for me the teachings of Jesus were always a very simple truth of love, universal love. Love yourself, and love others,” astronaut Jeremy Hansen said Sunday while broadcasting from onboard the Artemis capsule.
“Something for us being here looking back at all of you through one tiny window, that just resonates 100 percent true,” he added. “Our goal as humanity should be to just follow in that example, there were may examples in the past, but that’s one example of love that we can just all follow in the footsteps, and it will serve us well.”
Astronaut Christina Koch also sent love to her family back in Houston, along with all the children around the world enjoying Easter egg hunts on the holiday — and revealed the crew had shared in the holiday spirit by hiding some eggs around the capsule.
“They were the dehydrated scrambled egg variety, but we’re all pretty happy with them,” Koch said, as the crew laughed.
The crew’s Easter message and lunar approach during one of Christianity’s biggest holidays was yet another similarity to the moon mission Artemis II has been widely compared too — 1968’s Apollo 8.
That mission — like Artemis II — tested out the Apollo systems’ abilities to send a crew around the moon and back safely, and passed around the lunar surface on Christmas eve.
Apollo 8’s crew took turns reading from the Book of Genesis during a broadcast to Earth, with the view of the lunar surface emerging from the shadows of space visible through the capsule window.
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