Franklin Chapman
3/28/19
In 1971 astronaut Edgar Mitchell landed on the Moon on Apollo 14. With him, we had a large number of science experiments to do on the Lunar surface. At this time in the Apollo program, the only reason to send humans to the Moon was for scientific experiments. But Edgar Mitchell was taking something else along with him that some people would say is just as important as science. He brought along with him a copy of the King James Bible to leave on the Moon forever. This is the first example of the bible or a holy scripture making its way off the planet, a million miles out into the fast reaches of space to touch down on a gray airless world to be left for the rest of time. A recent example would be Israel’s space probe currently on its way to the Moon. This space probe is highly unusual for many reasons. For one its launch date was a struggle for the Jewish people launching it. In an article from “Religion News Service” titled “For Israeli Lunar Lander, faith provides inspiration and challenges”, author Jack Jenkins gives an overview of the role religion has had in this humble space probe heading to the Moon. First, he talks about how originally the launch date for the space probe called Beresheet was suppose to launch on a Saturday. But for the Jewish religion, Saturday is the Sabbath, and thus Jewish people are not meant to work on that day. Alexander Friedman, who is currently in charge of the mission as we speak said in the article “Because I am religion guy, I am forbidden to work on Saturday…”(Alexander Friedman, Jack Jenkins, paragraph 5). Friedman goes on to say that he and his team had many talks with SpaceX (The company who launched the Beresheet spacecraft on their Falcon 9 rocket) about moving the launch date to a day other than Saturday. And they were able to convince SpaceX to launch on an earlier day. They ended up launching on the Thursday before.
It is a common thing to think that religion and science can not co-exist, or even work together. But if the Beresheet spacecraft actually end up landing on the Moon successfully, not only will it have defied the odds of being the first privately funded spacecraft to land on the Moon. But it will also defy anyone saying that religion and science can work together. Israel is a highly religious country, and it is about to join the ranks of literal superpowers of the world by landing on the Moon. As of today, the only countries that have landed something on the Moon has been China, Russia, and the United States. And now a tiny country from the middle east is about to attempt it. The ability to have both expert scientists working in collaboration with religious leaders is a testament to how our world is constantly changing its view on the interaction of the two.
Work cited“For Israeli Lunar Lander, Faith Provides Inspiration and Challenges.” Religion News Service, 28 Mar. 2019, religionnews.com/2019/03/27/for-israeli-lunar-lander-faith-provides-inspiration-and-challenges/.
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