“This is what heaven must look like.”<\/p>\n
T here\u2019s no squinting in space. Things appear small, sure. From your vantage point, 254 miles above Earth, even the colossal Kapok trees of the Amazon are reduced to a verdant swirl in a cat-eye marble. But in space, as six NASA astronauts tell Inverse, what you see isn\u2019t necessarily what you envision. Up there, where perspective is immeasurably wide, it\u2019s impossible to miss the forest for the trees.<\/p>\n
The astronauts \u2014 Chris Hadfield, Jerry Linenger, Nicole Stott, Mae Jemison, Leland Melvin, and Mike Massimino \u2014 have all had the rare opportunity to view our home planet from space. In doing so, all of them went through a change, not only in how they saw the planet but in their relationship to it. Some refer to that change as the \u201cOverview Effect,\u201d a term coined in 1987 by celebrated space writer Frank White to describe the mental shift astronauts experience when they consider the Earth as part of a larger whole.<\/p>\n
The new National Geographic series One Strange Rock, executive produced by Darren Aronofsky and Jane Root of Nutopia, aims to recreate the Overview Effect for everybody else by showing, as best it can, the views that prompted those shifts.<\/p>\n
In a series of one-on-one conversations with the astronauts, Inverse asked what exactly each of them saw the moment that everything changed.<\/p>\n
Chris Hadfield
\n166 Days in Space
\nIt sneaks up on you, because you\u2019re busy and you\u2019re doing stuff. Your emotions almost end up somewhere behind you, because things are happening so fast. One of the reasons we take so many pictures is we don\u2019t have time to see what we\u2019re looking at. And you know if you don\u2019t somehow record this right now, you\u2019re going to miss it, and hopefully you\u2019ll have time later to look at it.<\/p>\n
So, sometimes when you\u2019re looking back at something you did, you realize what just happened. It was when I took a picture, actually, of Karachi, Pakistan, and I read what I wrote about it the next day, which was: \u201cThere are 6 million of us living in Pakistan.\u201d And I realized that that part of the world had become us for me.<\/p>\n
Six million of us? When is that no longer \u201cthem?\u201d How did that part of the world, which I\u2019ve never even been to, now, suddenly, because of the cumulative effect of where I am, start to feel like us? I think that\u2019s when the world became one place for me.<\/p>\n
Jerry Linenger
\n143 Days in Space
\nYou go through the launch and it\u2019s just chaos \u2014 it\u2019s just power. You think, \u201cWow, mankind built this thing \u2014 it\u2019s incredible! This thing\u2019s getting me to 17,500 miles an hour.\u201d All that part is incredible. So you catch up with everything; you do all the things your brain has to do: switches, make sure everything\u2019s correct, make sure the spacecraft\u2019s working.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s when you have that reflective moment, when you just float over the top of a window. In my five months on the Russian Space Station, I had some opportunities where, for 90 minutes, I would just levitate over a window, and I\u2019d see the sun rise, the sun set, the stars come out, and I\u2019d just sort of block the world out. I blocked out science, to some degree. I said: I\u2019m not going to identify the Big Dipper. There\u2019s so much stuff out there; it\u2019s a feeble effort by man to try and put labels on all this stuff.<\/p>\n
I took the gestalt of it and said, \u201cWow, that\u2019s the universe.\u201d And then, on the reverse side, I said, \u201cWow, that\u2019s Planet Earth, and there\u2019s civilization.\u201d You kind of go back in time with civilization. I said, \u201cWow, that\u2019s a river, I can see the rivers dotting it, I can see the Ganges River, and the light shining there.\u201d You realize these ancient civilizations are very similar to our civilizations. They needed water in those days, and we still need water. The rivers of the world look like pearl necklaces.<\/p>\n
You just have this incredible view of the universe, of Earth, and a little reflection of yourself as a human being, telling yourself, \u201cWow, I\u2019m in space. What mankind just accomplished is incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nicole Stott
\n104 Days in Space
\nAll I know is I was stunned in a way that was completely unexpected. It was overwhelmingly impressive \u2014 beyond anything I\u2019d heard from my colleagues who\u2019ve flown before. We just can\u2019t describe it, you know? When you go to different places here on Earth and experience things that you never thought you would before, it\u2019s difficult to describe it. I think with a lot of those things, you\u2019re seeing it, but you\u2019re feeling it, too. You feel like it\u2019s just getting in you.<\/p>\n
The planet just glows. I remember trying to describe to my son, who was seven at the time, what it was looking like to me. I\u2019m like, \u201cOkay, the simplest way I can think is just, take a lightbulb \u2014 the brightest lightbulb that you could ever possibly imagine \u2014 and just paint it all the colors that you know Earth to be, and turn it on, and be blinded by it.\u201d Because day, night, sunrise, sunset, it is just glowing in all of those colors.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t expect that. I expected it to be really, really pretty, but I didn\u2019t expect to feel like you could almost reach into it. You immediately cannot deny that it\u2019s a planet. That you live on a planet.<\/p>\n
I do remember initially looking out the window the first couple of days and wanting to see my home, wanting to see Florida from space. Finally, we were flying over Florida. I wanted to fly to the window and see it, and then realized somewhere down the line that I wasn\u2019t looking at Florida that same way anymore. I still wanted to see Florida, but Florida had just become this special part of home, which is Earth. I don\u2019t know when that happened. Was that two days after I got there? I mean, it wasn\u2019t like one day I woke up and was like, \u201cOh yeah, Earth\u2019s my home.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a feeling of interconnectivity that you sometimes just don\u2019t get when you\u2019re in the middle of something. I think separating ourselves from things that are important to us is good because you then appreciate it in a new way. That definitely happened for me with Earth.<\/p>\n
Mae Jemison
\nEight Days in Space
\nOne of the things that\u2019s really interesting is that you respond to what you took up with you. I didn\u2019t have any, \u201cAha, everything that belongs to me in life is down here on Earth.\u201d Mine was quite different. Mine was about connecting with the rest of the universe. I never grew up thinking that this was the end-all, be-all. I never thought of boundaries and borders. I always knew they were human-made \u2014 that we put them there; they had no relationship to anything. I knew that the clouds carry water over different parts of the world. That wasn\u2019t a big whoop for me.<\/p>\n
I tried to make myself afraid. I thought that I would be nervous being up there, but I was just so mellow and cool. I\u2019d done a couple of things: I was exactly where I wanted to be, I\u2019d made my peace with everybody if something happened, so I was very cool and in the moment. But I was like, \u201cThis is just feeling a little too good, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
I imagined that on the other side of this hatch is an atmosphere and environment that doesn\u2019t support my life form. But I couldn\u2019t make myself nervous. And I tried to imagine myself being on another star system 10,000 light-years away, and I felt fine. I thought it would be important that I was there with a bunch of people, but I was like, \u201cI would have loved to have been up there by myself in a big glass bubble with my cat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because I felt that connected. For me, it wasn\u2019t a connection back down to Earth. It was a connection with the rest of the universe.<\/p>\n
For me, it was about outward versus inward. But I think it depends on who you are when you go up.<\/p>\n
Leland Melvin
\n213 Days in Space
\nActually, it really happened after we installed the laboratory. Peggy Whitson, who is one of my colleagues on the show, she invited us over to the Russian segment to break bread; basically, to have a meal. And she said, \u201cYou guys bring the rehydrated vegetables, we\u2019ll have the meat.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, we came over with this bag of vegetables, and we\u2019re floating there, having this meal with people we used to fight against. Russians and Germans are on this mission. It\u2019s almost a Benetton commercial. African-American, Asian-American, French, German, Russian, the first female commander, breaking bread at 17,500 miles per hour, all doing this while listening to Sade\u2019s \u201cSmooth Operator.\u201d<\/p>\n
I look out the window, and I see the planet again. We\u2019re going around it so fast and we\u2019re coming over Virginia. I look down and I\u2019m thinking, \u201cMy parents are probably having a meal.\u201d Five minutes later, we\u2019re over Paris, where L\u00e9o\u2019s from, our French long-duration astronaut. And then Yuri, from Russia, can look over to the side and see his home.<\/p>\n
And so, in this one little moment in time, we\u2019re looking at our respective homes, breaking bread, and celebrating like we are in space. And that\u2019s when this shift happened, because I saw so much of the planet in 90 minutes. I saw all these different things happening. And that\u2019s when I think I really got my over-perspective. I thought it would be when I did this task of installing the Columbus laboratory, but that paled in comparison to the human piece of us sharing and breaking bread and seeing the planet in that way. Our respective homes, up in space.<\/p>\n
Melvin spoke with Inverse\u2018s James Grebey, at Space Camp.<\/p>\n
Mike Massimino
\n23 Days in Space
\nIt happened during a space walk. At Hubble, we were 100 miles higher than the station, so we could see the curve of the planet from up there. The view is really cool.<\/p>\n
If we were in a spaceship now, in this room \u2014 say we had windows \u2014 we\u2019d see 57th Street. Then, whoop, we blast off into space. And now, through that same window, you see something different. You\u2019re floating around; you\u2019re seeing the Earth. Ah, that\u2019s pretty cool. But you\u2019re still inside.<\/p>\n
When you go out, you\u2019re in the backyard, and everything opens up to you. You can see differently. For me, it definitely changed the way I think about things. I really think our planet is a paradise.<\/p>\n
I was at the Explorers Club Dinner. Jim Lovell, Apollo 13 guy \u2014 I had a conversation with during the day. He said, in his acceptance speech, something to the effect of: He knows what heaven is like because he was born there. Here.<\/p>\n
This is a paradise that we live in, I think. I do think of this place as heaven-like.<\/p>\n
I think this is a wonderful place to be, but I think seeing it from space, the beauty of it, that was my feeling. This is what heaven must look like, and I can\u2019t imagine anything more beautiful than our planet from space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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