“There is nothing normal about this.”
Words spoken from the furthest humanity has gone in half a century.
In their first live broadcast, Commander Reid Wiseman and his fellow astronauts on the Artemis II mission described their view of Earth as “spectacular”.
From outer space, they watched the polarising politics of their home planet fade into the distance.
But reflecting on the past week, it could equally be said of the White House under Donald J Trump: there is nothing normal about this.
Monday brought debate about potential war crimes, with the president having threatened to bomb Iran’s power and water desalination plants.
His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the US always operated within the law, “but” would continue to pursue its objectives “unabated”.
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By Tuesday, he was threatening to pull the US out of NATO, again, and singling out the UK, in particular.
“Go get your own oil!” he blasted on Truth Social.
An insult juxtaposed with confirmation that the King and Queen’s state visit to the United States will go ahead as scheduled this month.
The insults continued on Wednesday, with Donald Trump mocking Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron during an Easter reception.
He depicted them as weak, while his spiritual adviser, Paula White, depicted Trump as Christ-like.
“You were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused. It’s a familiar pattern that our Lord and Saviour showed us,” she said.
“They call me king now. Can you believe it?” Trump interjected, while reading about Palm Sunday.
A few hours later, he was delivering the vaguest presidential address to the nation in living memory.
Heavily billed as “an important update on the war”, it brought more confusion than clarity.
A quiet Maundy Thursday? Not a chance. That turned out to be Attorney General Pam Bondi’s last supper.
The president fired another high-profile woman from his cabinet, this one over her handling of the Epstein files, and for not pursuing his opponents more aggressively.
On Friday, the US lost an F-15 fighter jet to Iranian fire, one of the two crew quickly plucked to safety.
During efforts to find the second, a second US plane and two US Blackhawk helicopters were also hit.
A daring search and rescue mission in enemy territory, in the shadow of a daring lunar mission that has captivated humanity.
Christina Koch, the first woman in history to travel around the moon as part of the Artemis II mission, described seeing all of Earth through “one single pane”.
An “absolutely phenomenal” view, she said.
From tens of thousands of miles away, the planet is a fragile luminous sphere without borders, where human quarrels seem small.
But in the context of an unconventional White House, the potential for a much larger war in the Middle East looms large.
The one drawback of flying to the moon is that you might not want to come back again.
