Snack to the future?
Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman foretold his historic voyage to the moon in 2017 after opening a fortune cookie that predicted he would travel to a “strange place.” An X post showing the spaceman holding the prescient pastry’s prophecy is taking off online.
“A visit to a strange place will bring you renewed perspective,” reads the oracular cookie’s forecast, along with the lucky numbers 47, 31, 22, 9, 19, and 35.
In the caption, Wiseman wrote that he chose to “believe the fortune” and that the so-called voyage would perhaps entail a trip to the “moon or a #JourneyToMars.
While it may have seemed like a humorous distraction at the time, the confection’s prophecy would seemingly come true less than a decade later.
On Monday, Reid and his crew — Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — traveled the farthest anyone has gone into space after flying a staggering 252,756 miles from Earth during their historic tour of the moon.
In doing so, they eclipsed the record of 248,655 miles set by Apollo 13 in 1970. During this latest fly-by, the intrepid Artemis squad gazed upon swaths of the moon’s far side never before seen by human eyes
Fans of the mission were awestruck over how well the fortune had foretold Reid’s future.
“Hey, you’re gonna be shocked when I say this but … this is you on the way to the moon,” shared one viewer, along with a pic of Reid and his fellow astronauts phoning home from the cosmos.
“I’m from the future, boy do I have news for you,” said another.
“That’s one fortune cookie that delivered on a cosmic scale,” added a third.
Others observed that the numbers 47 and 22 are considered lucky across many cultures.
NASA also weighed in on Reid’s “good fortune,” sharing his X post with checkmarks next to “Strange place” and “New perspective” to suggest that the prediction had come to life.
Others wished him well on his return flight.
“What a beautiful fortune to have come true,” gushed one fan. “Congrats Reid, and have safe travels back home.”
The Artemis II has since departed the moon’s gravitational pull and is currently en route back to Earth with the projected “splashdown” slated for 8:07 p.m on Friday, if everything goes according to plan.
Perhaps the most moving moment of the voyage came when, after breaking Apollo 13’s record, members of the crew asked to name one of the newly observed lunar craters after Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll.
She died of cancer in 2020, leaving behind Wiseman and two daughters.
“A number of years ago, we started this journey in our close-knit astronaut family, and we lost a loved one,” Jeremy Hansen told NASA’s mission control in Houston during a Monday call as Wiseman cried along with the mission’s other two crew members. “There’s a feature in a really neat place on the moon, and it is on the near side-far side boundary.”
“It’s a bright spot on the moon, and we would like to call that Carroll,” he added, with Houston appearing to agree to the request.
The crew also requested that another crater be named after their capsule, Integrity.
Read the full article here
