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Featured Image Credit: NASA
Topics: Science, Nasa, Space, Climate Change, Environment
Britt Jones
Being in space is an experience that not many get to see, but for one man, it changed everything.
Astronauts have a hefty job when it comes to training, and sometimes, being sent into space for prolonged periods of time.
For example, Ron Garan spent 178 days in space and returned to Earth a changed man.
He has since tried to suggest that people live their lives differently after what he saw in space.
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He travelled 71 million miles in 2,842 orbits of the Earth, and having seen our floating rock from above, he decided to need to focus on our planet and being a collective, rather than have an ‘us’ against ‘them’ mentality.
It’s a common thing people end up taking away from their time in space, as it allows you to see how insignificant we truly are in the grand scheme of things.
Similarly, astronaut Mike Massimino’s time in space was overwhelming, but it also left him feeling like he'd seen something no one was supposed to 'look at'.
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Massimino spent 571 hours above our planet and spoke in an interview for Brut alongside astronaut Nicole Stott.
Massimino revealed that to see Earth felt wrong.
"My first reaction was this is too beautiful for people to look at," he explained, and added: "[It felt like] we're not meant to see this, [that] it's like a secret."
Massimino revealed that the sight was so overwhelming that he had to turn his head away from the window to collect himself.
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He explained the feeling as: "Then I got a bit emotional and I started to tear up a little bit, just from the beauty of our planet."
He also said that it gave him a new perspective on climate change, as you can see how the Earth changes all at once, instead of noticing small changes locally.
"If there are lake beds that are drying up, if there's rainforests starting to disappear, signs of pollution - you can see those from space," he said.
He added that he now believes 'we need to give our planet chance to recover."
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Massimo, like Garan, thinks we need to be kinder to Earth.
So did Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who went into space in 1961, and said the overview of our planet was something that made him realise it’s to be protected.
“Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is,” he later wrote in an autograph. “Let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it.”
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Garan said to the Big Think that it was so beautiful, it was a clarifying moment.
He said: “When I looked out the window of the International Space Station, I saw the paparazzi-like flashes of lightning storms, I saw dancing curtains of auroras that seemed so close it was as if we could reach out and touch them.
“I saw the unbelievable thinness of our planet's atmosphere. In that moment, I was hit with the sobering realisation that that paper-thin layer keeps every living thing on our planet alive.”
He added: “I saw an iridescent biosphere teeming with life, I didn't see the economy. But since our human-made systems treat everything, including the very life-support systems of our planet, as the wholly owned subsidiary of the global economy, it's obvious from the vantage point of space that we're living a lie.”