He landed back on Earth – and immediately looked up.
Trailblazing Artemis II astronaut Victor Glover over the weekend delivered a heavenly sermon to a crowd of fans gathered outside his Houston, Texas, home to welcome him back from the historic space mission.
“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,” said the cosmos would-be cleric – wearing a royal-blue NASA jumpsuit – to the crowd from his driveway in a now-viral TikTok video posted Sunday.
“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, drawing thunderous applause and cries of “Amen!”
“I love you, and we love you,” the spaceman concluded.
Another TikTok clip shows the beaming astronaut waving through a car window at the flag-waving and sign-sporting crowd waiting for him outside.
Supporters had decked out the front of his home with red, white and blue balloons and a giant “Welcome home, Victor!” sign, according to the clip.
“We are all so proud of you for making history!” the TikTok video was captioned.
Glover, 49, was one of four astronauts who safely returned to Earth on Friday night after a 10-day out-of-this-world voyage that sent humans deeper than ever into space as they flew by the moon.
The Artemis II soared 252,756 miles from Earth at one point, topping the 248,655-mile distance reached by Apollo 13 nearly 56 years ago to the day.
The mission marked the first time humans had viewed the moon up close since Apollo 17 left it in 1972 – and set the stage for future lunar exploration.
Glover — who became the first black man to orbit the moon — also praised God during the astronauts’ first remarks after splashdown.
“When this started, I wanted to thank God in public, and I want to thank God again, 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,” he said.
“And I wanted to thank our families for everything. …I love you, but not just those five beautiful cocoa-skinned ladies right there,” he said, referring to his wife and four daughters. “All of you.”
NASA will now review mission data before finalizing plans for Artemis III, which, much like the recent mission, will entail a lunar fly-by but no landing.
The next potential moon landing will occur in 2028 with Artemis IV, according to the agency’s plans.