Victor Glover may be back on Earth after a historic journey to the moon, but he’s not finished talking about the God who gave him the opportunity to get there.

Glover and the Artemis II crew returned to Earth Friday after a roughly 10-day mission, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean following a flight that sent them around the moon and tested NASA’s Orion spacecraft and Artemis system in the first crewed lunar mission in more than 50 years.

The mission set records for the farthest distance humans have traveled from Earth and marked the first time astronauts had ventured that close to the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. It also set the stage for a future crewed lunar landing – just as Apollo 8 did in 1968.

Glover made headlines while in space for openly sharing his faith during some of the mission’s most high-profile moments – and he continued delivering a similar message when he returned home.

“When this started on April 3rd, I wanted to thank God in public, and I want to thank God again,” he said at the crew’s first news conference after returning. “Because even bigger than my challenge trying to describe what we went through, the gratitude of seeing what we saw, doing what we did, and being with who I was with, it's too big to just be in one body.”

Glover also shared that message of love and unity when he spoke with neighbors outside his house – a moment captured in a TikTok that went viral. He was the mission’s pilot.

“Some of us have never met before, and you know whose fault that is? Ours. So let's choose to do this. Let's be this more – let's be neighbors.

“I don't know if you heard me say it, but God told us to love Him with all that we are and love our neighbors as ourselves,” he said to applause, standing near his family. “I love you – and we love you.”

It was Glover’s second mission to space, but easily his most significant. As the Orion craft traveled behind the moon during a period when he and the crew temporarily lost communications for 40 minutes, he used the moment to point viewers to the words of Christ – encouraging those back on Earth to love each other more.

“As we get close to the nearest point to the moon and the farthest point from Earth – as we continue to unlock the mysteries of the cosmos – I would like to remind you of one of the most important mysteries there on Earth, and that's love,” Glover said, shortly before NASA lost communication. “Christ said, in response to what was the greatest command, that it was to love God with all that you are – and He also, being a great teacher – said the second is equal to it, and that is to love your neighbor as yourself.”

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