Marooned Astronaut, While Stuck in Space, Is in ‘Constant Contact’ With Church, Says Pastor: He’s a Christian ‘First and Foremost’

With two astronauts unexpectedly in space until February 2025, a pastor at the church that one of them attends tells the Sun about life back home in his absence.

NASA via AP
NASA astronaut Barry 'Butch' Wilmore is greeted by the crew of the International Space Station on Thursday, June 6, 2024. NASA via AP

A NASA astronaut, Barry Wilmore, whose eight day journey to space has turned into an eight month ordeal, will miss out on family holidays, go without hot showers for months, and the face mental and physical toll of an extended stay in space. But his top concern, according to one man close to him, is missing out on his teenage daughter’s last year of high school. 

“As astronauts, they live with contingencies,” a pastor at the Houston-area Providence Baptist Church, Tommy Dahn, tells the Sun. “His only care, that I have heard from him, is that his daughter is a senior in high school this year, and he’s going to miss a big part of that senior year. When he went up, he thought it was going to be for eight days.”

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