JUAN WILLIAMS: My nephew returned from space with a message America needs
In one of this year’s most popular movies, "Project Hail Mary," there’s no happy ending — the astronaut never makes it back to Earth.
And in 1969, just days before Apollo 11 landed on the moon, English singer, songwriter and actor David Bowie released a hit song about "Major Tom," an astronaut who floated into deep space, never making it home.
Today I’m writing a happy story. The NASA astronaut in my family just defied both the movie and the song.
Welcome back to planet Earth, Chris Williams.
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The drive to explore new frontiers is a hallmark of American history, from westward expansion to light bulbs, airplanes and personal computers.
This year, the U.S. sent a mission, Artemis II, to rocket around the moon in preparation for a return to the lunar surface for the first time since Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped on the moon in July 1969.
And this year, I saw my nephew, the grandson of Panamanian immigrants, talking with his fellow astronauts as they sped by his post on the International Space Station.
A few weeks later, Chris’ dad, my brother, Roger, got a Father’s Day greeting as Chris streamed into Trinity Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. Even more emotional for me was hearing Roger praise his son for going to space and for growing "beyond every expectation."
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As his uncle, I’ve known Chris since he was a child, wearing a onesie adorned with astronauts and planets. It is hard to get my mind around the idea that he just spent eight months on the International Space Station, completing 3,856 orbits around the Earth at 17,000 miles an hour.
He did spacewalks, floating in space with the American flag on his pressurized spacesuit.
Chris, the highly curious boy, is now a man who successfully returned to Earth on Sunday, July 26.
In a time of national anxiety over war, inflation and polarized politics, Chris is a flesh-and-blood reminder that space travel has the power to inspire awe and renew the American spirit of adventure.
His red, white and blue space adventure is also a powerful retort to the 59% of Americans who told Pew in a May survey ahead of the nation’s 250th birthday that the country’s best days are behind us.
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Despite all the political controversies orbiting around billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, America’s leading moguls investing in space exploration, history tells us to focus on achievement. Henry Ford was politically polarizing, but he also revolutionized manufacturing and transportation.
President John F. Kennedy got it right in the 1960s when he said the U.S. mission to land on the moon was an appropriate national goal because it "served to organize and measure the best of our energies and skill."
That is the optimistic message I got as I watched Chris during his time on the space station, including his two spacewalks.
How can I describe watching NASA TV and seeing the eye-popping sight of the son of my brother and his wife, Roger and Ginger, flying through outer space while hanging by a tether from the space station?
He was outside the space station on his last walk for nearly eight hours, working with fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir to repair robotic arms.
And in January, a fellow American astronaut on the space station lost his ability to speak and was evacuated with other crew members. Chris was left behind. For a month, he was the only American on the space station.
Part of Chris’s mission was to figure out how to keep astronauts healthy on lengthy space trips as the U.S. works to return to the moon and even send astronauts to Mars.
NASA scientists, including Chris, studied how zero gravity affects the brain and even changes balance and the sense of direction. Chris made himself a subject of study to track how long-term space travel changes human eyes and bone density.
Family alarms went off when NASA ordered Chris and other astronauts to evacuate the space station because of a possible air leak. He took shelter in a small spacecraft.
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This was no movie script. It was genuinely a time of high anxiety for his wife and children in Houston, as well as the whole family, during the two hours before NASA gave the word for him to go back inside.
While in space, Chris’ job was also to inspire young Americans to study math and science and become future space explorers. Chris handled the job with ease. He turned the space station into a fun show for students. They marveled at his ability to turn horizontal and float through the space station like Superman. They wanted to know what he had to eat and how he slept.
Young people in Florida wanted to know the difference between doing scientific research on Earth and in space.
The answer could have been intimidating coming from Chris. He has a physics degree from Stanford and a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). And he completed training in medical physics at Harvard Medical School.
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But he turned the answer into awe-inspiring fun. He called attention to the Velcro strips on his jumpsuit and on the walls. In zero gravity, he explained, every instrument, every tool, every vial, every sample will just float away if not attached.
One of his teaching tricks was to release a bubble of water and watch it float around before he pretended to be Pac-Man and gobbled it out of the air.
He also attracted viral attention with his photography.
The internet started asking about aliens when he posted photos of the West Coast of India showing green, neon lights piercing a dark sky. They turned out to be LED lights used by fishing fleets to attract squid.
His photos of fireworks exploding during Lunar New Year in February, as the space station passed over China, were praised by other astronauts for their astounding beauty.
To me, Chris’ uniquely American life story is also inspiring.
He is the grandson of Black immigrants from Panama, my parents.
In 1958, his grandmother left Colón, Panama, with three children aboard a freighter carrying bananas to Brooklyn, New York. My father also saw opportunities disappearing for Black Panamanians under the racist dictatorship of Arnulfo Arias. It was also time for my older sister to begin high school.
In New York, Chris’ grandmother worked for minimum wage in a Manhattan dress factory — a sweatshop, as they were commonly called — while my father sent what little money he could from Panama.
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A generation later, our family has been blessed beyond measure. We have celebrated children who became lawyers, physicians, business leaders and successful professionals.
On Father’s Day, Chris took time to beam live from space and celebrate his dad and mom in front of the congregation at Washington, D.C.’s Trinity Episcopal Church.
My tears flowed when his dad praised Chris as a son who grew "beyond every expectation." Roger asked that the powers of the universe "bring you home safely." The congregation wished him well "until we see you again."
On Sunday, July 26, Chris landed in Kazakhstan with two Russian cosmonauts. A NASA recovery team was there and returned him to the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Welcome home, Chris. What an inspiring ride!
Editor's note: This opinion article is adapted from a column that first appeared in The Hill.
