TWO NASA astronauts serving on the International Space Station (ISS) are members of the same Texan church, and are joining services and prayer meetings online from space.
The astronauts, Barry “Butch” Wilmore, the mission commander, and Tracy Dyson, who attend the Providence Baptist Church in Pasadena, have even given the congregation a virtual tour of the space station.
Commander Wilmore, an elder in the church, had his original eight-day space mission unexpectedly extended by up to eight months owing to technical problems with the first flight of the Boeing Starliner capsule.
The church’s pastor, Tommy Dahn, told the Church Times this week that Commander Wilmore’s faith was supporting him during the “unplanned” stay, and that “he ministers to us” by making calls from the space station to the congregation, to support them.
Before the inaugural flight of the Starliner in June, Commander Wilmore had told reporters: “Our families have been a part of this from the beginning. . . As far as preparing them, they’re prepared. We trust in sovereign God. Whatever the plan is, we’re ready for it, whatever that might be.”
The capsule experienced helium leaks and thrusters that abruptly stopped working on the initial leg of its first crewed test flight to the ISS. The fate of the two astronauts, Commander Wilmore and Suni Williams, had remained uncertain for weeks, until NASA announced at the weekend that a Space X capsule had offered them a lift back to earth next February.
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION/NASABarry “Butch” Wilmore
Commander Wilmore is a Navy test pilot who has previously been on long missions in space.
Dr Dyson had always been prepared to spend six months on the ISS, and remains there until September.
The families of both astronauts are also members of the congregation.
Mr Dahn said: “We are in contact with both Barry and Tracy via email, a few phone messages, and Tracy’s husband and Barry’s family are all in our church also. Our Sunday-morning services are live-streamed and they have access to the streaming most of the time, depending on their location. We pray corporately often for them.”
Asked about what impact space travel had had on his faith, Commander Wilmore said that “he did not need to go into space to learn anything about his Lord: his word is sufficient.”
There have been 26 astronaut parishioners at a neighbouring Roman Catholic church, St Paul the Apostle, the pastor, Fr Wencil Pavlovsky, said. The church was established in the 1960s to serve the space community. Its stained-glass windows feature images from the Hubble Telescope. In 2017, Fr Pavlovsky assisted the former astronaut Mark Vande Hei to take communion into space.
NASA has said that astronauts are permitted to take religious items into space, and that it supports them to stay connected to their faith community. Last year, the astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli celebrated Hanukkah on the space station, posting a video featuring a menorah, a spinning dreidel, and her view of earth.
In 1968, the three astronauts aboard Apollo 8 broadcast their reading from Genesis on Christmas Eve as they flew around the moon, starting with “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.”