Religion in space

• 1. Introduction

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  On Christmas Eve, 1968, three astronauts orbiting the Moon opened a broadcast to Earth by reading from the Book of Genesis. Bill Anders, Jim Lovell, and Frank Borman had traveled farther from Earth than any human in history. Yet at the moment of their greatest distance, they reached for one of humanity's oldest texts. That single act would spark a lawsuit, ignite a national debate, and set a precedent that astronauts would follow for decades.

  Religion in space is not a minor footnote. It is a recurring thread running through nearly every major human spaceflight program. From communion wafers on the lunar surface to fatwas on prayer direction, from Torah scrolls rescued from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to icons blessed by Russian Orthodox priests on a launch pad, space travelers have carried their faiths with them into the void. What does it mean to observe a religion when the sun rises sixteen times a day? How do you face Mecca when Mecca is a moving point thousands of kilometers below? And what happens to belief when you look back at Earth from outside it?

• 2. Apollo's Religious Moments

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  Buzz Aldrin, a Presbyterian, carried a small communion kit to the Moon's surface aboard Apollo 11. He had planned to broadcast the service back to Earth, but flight director Chris Kraft had been told of the plan, and Deke Slayton asked him not to, given the lingering controversy from the Apollo 8 Genesis reading. Aldrin performed the service privately instead, becoming the first person to conduct a religious ceremony on another world.

  A signed message from Pope Paul VI was among the statements from world leaders placed on the Moon during that same Apollo 11 mission, preserved on a silicon disk. After the astronauts returned, William Donald Borders, Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orlando, informed the Pope that under the 1917 Code of Canon Law, the Moon fell within his diocese. His reasoning: the first explorers had departed from Cape Kennedy, which was under his jurisdiction. The Pope neither confirmed nor denied the claim, and the Moon has never been officially recognized as part of the diocese.

  Not every Apollo-era religious artifact reached the Moon without tragedy behind it. A microfilm King James Bible brought to the lunar surface by Apollo 14 astronaut Ed Mitchell was created as a tribute after three astronauts died in the Apollo 1 fire. Ed White, one of those who perished in that fire, had originally wanted to take a Bible to the Moon himself. That Bible was auctioned off in 2011. On the 2009 STS-128 flight to the International Space Station, astronaut Patrick Forrester carried a fragment of a Missionary Aviation Fellowship aircraft that had been used by the Operation Auca martyrs in Ecuador in 1956.

• 3. Faith Among the Lost Crews

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  Among the crew members of STS-51-L, the Space Shuttle Challenger mission, several were people of faith. Commander Dick Scobee was a Baptist who had met his wife June at a church social event. After the disaster, June Scobee wrote an article in Guideposts Magazine about how their faith carried her through the grief. Pilot Michael J. Smith and his family attended a non-denominational Christian church near their home close to Houston's NASA Johnson Space Center.

  Rick Husband, the Commander of the Space Shuttle Columbia's STS-107 mission, left a personal note for his pastor on the last-request forms astronauts fill out before every flight. It read: "Tell them about Jesus; he's real to me." After the Columbia broke apart during reentry in 2003, his wife Evelyn wrote a book about their life and his faith, titled High Calling: The Courageous Life and Faith of Space Shuttle Columbia Commander Rick Husband. His STS-107 crewmate Michael P. Anderson was also a devout Christian and, when not on a NASA mission, sang in the choir of Grace Community Church.

  The Columbia mission also carried Jewish astronaut Ilan Ramon, an Israeli who brought aboard a microfilm Torah, a handwritten copy of the Shabbat kiddush, and a miniature Torah scroll that had survived the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Ramon and the entire crew died when the shuttle disintegrated on reentry. Three years later, Canadian astronaut Steve MacLean carried another Torah from Bergen-Belsen to the International Space Station, this time aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis, as a direct tribute to Ramon.

• 4. Islamic Law Meets Orbital Mechanics

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  The International Space Station orbits Earth at roughly 27,600 kilometers per hour, which means an astronaut aboard it witnesses a sunrise and sunset approximately sixteen times every twenty-four hours. The direction from the station to Mecca changes significantly within seconds. These are not abstract theological puzzles. They are the practical problems that faced Muslim astronauts from the moment the first Muslim flew in space.

  After more than 150 religious scholars and scientists convened, the Department of Islamic Development Malaysia issued an 18-page fatwa laying out guidelines for Muslim astronauts. Their ruling on which direction to face for prayer, the qibla, offered four options in order of preference: face the Kaaba itself; face the point directly above the Kaaba at the altitude of the orbit; face the Earth; or face wherever is possible. Turkey's Diyanet, which follows the Hanafi school rather than Malaysia's Shafi'i school, took a simpler position: facing the Earth is enough. Khaleel Muhammad of San Diego State University summarized the scholarly consensus with a principle: God does not hold a person responsible for what is beyond their ability.

  The same fatwa addressed the physical challenge of prostration in weightlessness. Scholars ruled that bowing, or ruku, and prostration, or sujud, could be performed by moving the chin up and down. If that was not possible, moving the eyes up and down would suffice. If none of that was possible, simply imagining the movements was ruled acceptable. For ablution, a wet wipe was declared sufficient; if even that was unavailable, symbolically rubbing the hands on a clean wall was deemed valid under the practice of tayammum.

  Fasting during Ramadan presented its own set of problems. Islamic scholars ruled that astronauts, holding the status of travelers, were not required to fast, and could make up the missed days after returning to Earth. Those who wished to fast anyway could do so according to Greenwich Mean Time. Saudi astronaut Sultan bin Salman Al Saud chose to fast during his mission even though religious authorities explicitly told him he did not have to.

• 5. Personal Faith in Orbit

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  Malaysian astronaut Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor shared footage of himself praying in space. He noted that the sun rises and sets every 45 minutes from his vantage point. Shukor said he read the Quran more frequently after going to space than he had on Earth, and that he felt spiritually closer to Allah. He also said he heard the sound of the adhan, the call to prayer, while in space, calling it a miracle and attributing it to the majesty of Allah. During Eid al-Fitr, he threw a party for the entire crew, handing out cookies and kebab.

  Turkish astronaut Alper Gezeravcı, the first Turkish person to go to space, performed salah ash-shukr, a prayer of gratitude, while in orbit. He stated that people should be grateful for gravity. The 8-pointed Seljuk star on his mission patch, he explained, carries what he described as the fundamental principles of Islam. He cited medieval Islamic engineers and astronomers al-Jazari and Ali Qushji as inspirations for young people to combine faith and technical ambition. The Turkish government frames aerospace development not as Westernization but as a reclamation of the science and technology heritage of the Turkish-Islamic past, citing figures including al-Jazari, Hezarfen Ahmed Çelebi, and Ibn Sina.

  Emirati astronaut Hazza Al Mansouri's first words before liftoff were "We rely on the name of the almighty Allah." Both Sultan Al Neyadi and Rayyanah Barnawi spoke about looking down at Mecca from space; Barnawi added "praise be to Allah." Iranian-American astronaut Anousheh Ansari, who participated as a space tourist on the International Space Station, commented that she sees faith and science as very complementary.

• 6. Orthodox Traditions and Other Faiths

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  In Russia, Orthodox blessings before a mission are not a private matter. Priests bless the crew, and the Soyuz rockets themselves are blessed on the launch pad before each flight. Cosmonaut Aleksandr Viktorenko began this practice when he personally requested a blessing for the launch of Soyuz TM-20 in 1994. On the 7th of January 2011, Russian Orthodox Christmas was celebrated aboard the International Space Station, with cosmonauts given the day off. The wider crew had already celebrated on December 25. Cosmonauts sometimes carry religious icons to space at the request of the Russian Orthodox Church; on return to Earth, those icons are distributed to churches.

  American astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman carried multiple Jewish objects across his missions between 1985 and 1996: a miniature Torah scroll, a yad, a Torah breastplate, mezuzot, menorahs, a dreidel, a hand-woven tallit, and kiddush cups. Sunita Williams brought a copy of the Bhagavad Gita to the International Space Station in December 2006; in July 2012, she brought an Om symbol and a copy of the Upanishads. On the 27th of February 2021, the PSLV-C51 rocket carried a digital copy of the Bhagavad Gita into space on an SD card. Ellison Onizuka, who flew aboard STS-51-C, was the first Buddhist, the first Asian-American, and the first person of Japanese descent and Hawaiian origin to go to space. He died during the Challenger disaster in 1986.

• 7. The Theology of One-Way Trips

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  In 2014, the Mars One project proposed sending a crew of astronauts on a permanent, one-way journey to establish a human colony on Mars. The volunteers would never return to Earth. The General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowment in the United Arab Emirates issued a fatwa declaring that Muslim participation in the mission was forbidden, on the grounds that a person who undertook the trip might perish for no righteous reason. The fatwa classified such a mission as equivalent to suicide, which is prohibited under Islamic law.

  Other Islamic legal experts criticized the ruling, arguing it lacked a proper understanding of the mission's scope. They noted that if future technology could safely guarantee survival, Mars would actually be highly compatible with Islamic worship. Its day is 24.65 hours long, allowing for normal cycles of fasting and prayer that are nearly identical to those on Earth. Venus, by contrast, rotates so slowly that its day lasts 243 Earth-days, and the sun rises there in the west, creating obstacles for Islamic practice that are genuinely difficult to resolve.

  The Malaysian fatwa on space travel takes a broader view. It explicitly encourages Muslims to travel to space in order to maintain a relationship with God, preserve the space environment, and maintain peaceful relations with others. Drawing on the Islamic concepts of Tawhid, the oneness of God, and Khilafah, human stewardship of creation, Islamic thinkers have argued that space exploration must be conducted equitably, sustainably, and responsibly. Monopolistic commercialization, extreme militarization, and the unchecked accumulation of space debris are all seen as contrary to Islamic principles. The fatwa's encouragement of space exploration as a religious duty sits in direct tension with the UAE ruling against one-way missions, reflecting the diversity of interpretation within Islamic jurisprudence itself.