Sacred Space

When American astronauts lift off into space, they don’t necessarily leave their faith on the launching pad. Many people still remember the live televised transmission on Christmas Eve 1968 during which the crew of Apollo 8 — Frank Borman II, James Lovell Jr., and William Anders — took turns reading from the creation story in Genesis as their ship orbited the moon. In 1969, astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, a Presbyterian elder, quietly conducted a communion service for himself as he sat in the lunar lander on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission.

Catholic astronauts also have taken Holy Communion — not a symbolic wafer, but the sacramental Real Presence of Christ — during several space missions, with permission from NASA and their local bishops.

In 1994, onboard the space shuttle Endeavour, three astronauts—Thomas Jones, Sid Gutierrez, and Kevin Chilton—held a Communion service on their flight deck. Chilton, an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion, led the service and distributed the hosts from a golden pyx.

“The three of us thanked God for the views of His universe, the good companions, and for the success granted our crew so far,” Jones later recalled in an interview.

A SPECIAL MOMENT

Chilton first got the idea from the late astronaut G. David Low, who had taken Communion on at least one of his three space shuttle flights between 1990 and 1993. “I thought, how cool is that?” Chilton said. “So, I copied his idea.”

A week before his first launch aboard Endeavour in 1992, Chilton visited his pastor at St. Bernadette Church in Houston and made his request. The pastor loved the idea. For that first trip, the pastor gave Chilton two hosts in a pyx. During that mission, he shared Communion with Catholic crewmate Pierre Thuot.

Chilton took three consecrated hosts for his next two flights — the 1994 trip with Jones and Gutierrez, and his final mission aboard the shuttle Atlantis in 1996.

Of the 1994 trip, Chilton recalled saying prayers and distributing the hosts. At the moment he put the host on his tongue, he closed his eyes and “felt a radiant heat on my face,” he said. Startled by the experience, he opened his eyes and realized the ship had “flown into a sunrise, with the sun blasting through the front windows. It happened at the exact moment I put the host on my tongue.”

It was a special moment for all three men, as “we had our faith strengthened and affirmed by this experience in space,” said Chilton.

Jones later wrote of the sunrise experience in his 2006 book Sky Walking: An Astronaut’s Memoir:

“What else could this be but a sign? — God’s gentle affirmation of our union with Him,” he wrote. “Drifting parallel to the floor, I rolled away from my crewmates, embarrassed at my reaction to that singular sunrise. Through tears I looked instead through the overhead windows at the Pacific below, the dawn painting its surface with a rich, limitless blue.”

He continued: “We are designed to be awed in space. If our imperfect species has found such glimmers of delight in our first tentative encounter with the cosmos, then we have truly found a most caring and generous God.”

SACRAMENTAL STRENGTH

More recently, astronaut Mike Hopkins brought the Eucharist with him during a six-month stay at the International Space Station in 2013. With the zeal of a convert after having been received into the Catholic Church less than a year before, Hopkins brought six hosts divided into 24 pieces so he could receive the Eucharist weekly during his time onboard the ISS.

Hopkins requested and received his permission from the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, where he resided, with assistance from a priest and deacon at his parish. Receiving the Eucharist in space, he later said, gave him strength to handle stress during the mission, such as when he exited the ISS for a spacewalk. “It was really helpful for me to know that Jesus was with me when I went out the hatch into the vacuum of space,” he said.

Neither NASA nor the Russian Space Agency, which collaborated on the ISS mission, had any reservations about his having the Eucharist onboard or taking Communion, Hopkins said. Neither did his fellow astronauts. “My Russian crewmates knew I had the Eucharist with me,” he said in a 2017 interview. “In fact, I coordinated with my Russian commander … they respected my faith and my desire to follow that faith even when I was in orbit.”

The weekly Eucharist in flight “helped strengthen my faith, because when I was able to receive the host and realize that if my faith is strong, I have nothing to be afraid of…that helped,” said Hopkins.

‘BEAUTIFUL DOWN THERE’

Chilton, now 67, went on to become the only former NASA astronaut to be promoted to four-star general and retired in 2011 as head of United States Strategic Command. He reflects proudly on his NASA experience and how his missions into space gave him a fresh perspective on his faith.

“The world is beautiful down there,” he said of the astronaut’s-eye view of earth from space. “While flying over my hometown of Los Angeles, I can use my thumb and cover up six million people. [But] God loves us each individually, and each of the seven or eight billion people on the earth.”

The thought is humbling, Chilton said.

“I’m blessed to have had the opportunity to fly, and doubly blessed to take Our Lord with me and share His Body and Blood with my fellow Catholic astronauts,” he said. “It made the experience of being in space all the more special.”