Last Friday, I got to do something I have wanted to do for a long time, and that was to see the Earth from space!
Well, in an immersive experience and through VR goggles – but it was still
incredible!
The exhibition is called Space Explorers: THE INFINITE; its creators are based in Montreal (proud to say as that is where I live), as is the event-experience currently – although they have traveled through many US cities.
Here is what the experience was like once you got a moment to adjust to no longer seeing with your own eyes what is in front of you and where you are walking but through goggles, and a whole new world…
That world is Space.
Some of the first sights within the experience are the people standing around you, but they’re an avatar-like of sparkles. And if you wave your own hands in front of you, they are a sparkling shape of a hand. That alone is a dream-like state; weird, yet magical, and so un-worldly – but fun!
There is darkness all around you. But the lights come through stars up above, some planets, the Milky Way, and when looking down, you can make up cities through their lights of a nighttime-lit Earth.
It’s still dark all around you – you’re in space after all – but you can clearly see the Space Station; inside, its cluttered interior, and outside, all the outdoor modules and names written on them like Japan, NASA, SpaceX, Canada, and its red flag/logo on the top of the last “a” of “Canada”!
Yes, you can clearly see the long robotic Canadarm “hanging” out there in space, extended from the Space Station. The overwhelming sight of the huge solar arrays that power the ISS (International Space Station or just Space Station), as well as the SpaceX capsule Dragon docked at the station, (and more!) – it is a lot to take-in. But you do. You look up, down, through … And it’s just captivating and fascinating!
You “enter” the ISS and you get to experience the ceremonial welcoming of a new crew to the station. You listen-in to various conversations, sometimes between astronauts, sometimes explaining to you how things are done. You have ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Luca Parmitano standing (well, floating but his feet under a rod anchoring him in place), and talking directly to you.
You watch Christina Koch and Jessica Meir maneuvering inside the station a huge lithium battery and getting ready for the historic all-female spacewalk. To see the two women interact there in space and doing something that is so hard in weightlessness and so high-risk in the vacuum of space, is an inspiring and proud thing to witness (for me as a woman, but hopefully for anyone seeing it).
Even though this was the 221st spacewalk performed in support of the space station assembly, it was Jessica Meir’s very first spacewalk, the 15th woman overall and 14th U.S. woman to spacewalk. You can learn more here: Friday's All-Woman Spacewalk: The Basics | NASA.
There “with” us, were astronaut David Saint-Jacques from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and US astronauts Nick Hague, Andrew Morgan, and as mentioned just above, Christina Koch, Jessica Meir, and Luca Parmitano from the ESA.
But then it came. Then you saw the Earth!
You saw the curvature of the Earth against the darkness of space; you saw sunsets and sunrises from up above, and continents that were in between darkness and sun-lit. You saw masses of lands and oceans, and the thin blue veil of an atmosphere, the one circling the whole globe that is our planet.
Sun light, a protective atmosphere, and the waters that make our planet a blue marble is what is our world; what nurtures us and gives us life, you, me, all creatures, and all of nature.
The breathtaking views were just stunning and mesmerizing and with such a unique way of experiencing it. I’ve seen the Earth from space from my laptop and even phone from many past captured footages by astronauts and cameras on spacecrafts, and it’s always so beautiful to see. But what astronauts see with their own eyes is a unique and profound experience for humans, and so few humans have experienced it.
I was not actually in space, and I was also not looking at space from some device, but I was “there”, albeit in this immersive experience. And it really was breathtaking.
If you know anything about astronauts experiencing space, you have heard of the term Overview Effect. It’s literally what the word says “overview” but in the context of being above the Earth, and the “effect” is how the experience changes you in a profound way; with the unique views of the Earth and its delicate nature and how all you’ve ever known is born on that planet, and surrounding you is darkness and emptiness and lifeless, you instantly develop a new perspective of how precious and delicate life on Earth is.
I will not state that I really experienced the Overview Effect; something about wearing this heavy headset, hearing other people around me talk, and having to walk a little clumsily around with the goggles (and not being weightless)…
But my goodness, the views were just spectacular! In fact, I would sometimes look at a seen of the Earth and I would cover my mouth because it was wide open in a “wow” expression (or jaw-dropping) as to not make the staff standing nearby giggle, catching me in that moment.
Or I tried not to get teary-eyed because I knew I couldn’t wipe my tears due to the goggles I was wearing.
At one point, we got to sit down and look at a spacewalk being conducted, and you can see the astronauts doing their thing, you can see the Space Station and some of its modules – all stunning. But as a backdrop, or rather, to me, as the main scene, was the Earth; its curvature, and all the blue, brown and clouds seen from above. That's the only thing I could look at. It was truly magnificent!
“As we got further and further away, it [the Earth] diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man.”
- James B. Irwin, Astronaut, Apollo Program
We can't all go to space (at least, not yet), but if you get a chance to experience something similar to this experience, go do it!!
"For those who have seen the Earth from space, and for the hundreds and perhaps thousands more who will, the experience most certainly changes your perspective. The things that we share in our world are far more valuable than those which divide us."
Donald Williams, NASA astronaut
Comments