This story appears in the March 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine.
Watch on National Geographic: Take a thrilling tour of one of the universe’s most peculiar places—Earth—in the 10-part event series One Strange Rock, airing Mondays at 10/9c starting March 26.
For the bulk of human history, it’s been impossible to put Earth in cosmic perspective.
Bound by gravity and biology, we can’t easily step outside it, above it, or away from it. For most of us, Earth is inescapably larger than life. Even now, after nearly six decades of human spaceflight, precious few people have rocketed into orbit and seen the sun peeking out from behind that curved horizon. Since 1961, a mere 556 people have had this rarefied experience. Fewer, just 24, have watched Earth shrink in the distance, growing smaller and smaller until it was no larger than the face of a wristwatch. And only six have been completely alone behind the far side of the moon, cut off from a view of our planet as they sailed in an endlessly deep, star-studded sea.
It’s an inherently unnatural thing, spaceflight. After all, our physiology evolved specifically to succeed on this planet, not above it. Perhaps that’s why it can be difficult for astronauts to describe the experience of seeing Earth from space.
Italian space traveler Luca Parmitano says that we haven’t yet developed the words to truly convey the realities of spaceflight. The building blocks of modern human communication, words are necessarily constrained by meaning and connotation, no matter which language you choose (Parmitano speaks five). And until the mid-20th century, there was no need to express what it means to see our planet in the fiercely primeval essence of space. “We just don’t think in terms of spaceflight,” he says.
1960
1970
1990
36 years elapsed between John Glenn’s spaceflights
John Glenn
Oldest human in space:
77 years old
Longest cumulative
time spent in space
by an American:
665 days
(3 missions)
Neil Armstrong
First human to
walk on the moon:
July 20, 1969
2000
Valentina Tereshkova
First woman in space:
June 1963
Valeri Polyakov
Gennady Padalka
Longest time
continuously spent
in space: 437 days
Longest cumulative
time spent in space:
878 days
(5 missions)
Yuri Gagarin
First human
in space:
April 1961
200
2010
300
Exactly 556 people have been to space,
starting with cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin
and his first orbit of Earth in 1961.
Among them, 553 have circled the planet,
24 beyond the orbits of most satellites.
Twelve have walked on the moon. These
travelers share something exceedingly
rare in the human experience: a planetary
perspective of our home.
Ed Lu
400
Mike Massimino
Karen Nyberg
First space tourist—
one of seven people
to pay the Russian
Space Agency for
a trip to space
Careers in space
U.S. (337 people)
Intervals between
spaceflights
500
U.S.S.R./Russia (118)
Other countries (101)
Leland Melvin
Extended stay
(> 30 days)
Samantha Cristoforetti
In the 1986 Challenger disaster, veteran astronauts
Francis Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, and Ronald
McNair were killed alongside first-time astronauts
Michael Smith, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe,
who never reached space and are not represented here.
Jason Treat, NGM StafF
Sources: NASA; Japan Aerospace EXploration Agency; European Space
Agency; Canadian Space Agency; Gagarin Research & Test Cosmonaut
Training Center; National Center for Space Studies (CNES)
Seeing Earth from space can change a person’s worldview. U.S. astronaut Nicole Stott flew twice on the space shuttle Discovery and returned with a new drive for creating artwork depicting the view. Canadian spacefarer Chris Hadfield says that while orbiting Earth, he felt more connected to the people on the planet than ever before.
Kathy Sullivan, who in 1984 became the first American woman to perform a space walk, returned with an abiding awe for the intricate systems that come together to make Earth an improbable oasis. “The thing that grew in me over these flights was a real motivation and desire … to not just enjoy these sights and take these pictures,” she says, “but to make it matter.”
After retiring from NASA, Sullivan led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for three years, using the robotic eyes of orbiting satellites to pursue her passion. She says Earth from above is so captivatingly beautiful, she never grew bored looking at it. “I’m not sure I’d want to be in the same room with someone who could get tired of that.”
Even when words fail us, a single picture of home from above can change the perspectives of millions of people. In 1968 the Apollo 8 crew became the first people to rocket far away from Earth and loop around the moon. On Christmas Eve, astronaut William Anders snapped what would become an unforgettable image: a lush world rising above the sterile, cratered lunar horizon. Now called “Earthrise,” the photograph boosted awareness of our planet’s beauty and fragility.
“Twenty eighteen is the 50-year anniversary of that iconic picture that helped define the environmental movement. What are the course corrections we need to do now that will help us get to the hundredth anniversary?” asks U.S. astronaut Leland Melvin. He’s working with a coalition of fellow space travelers to rethink how we balance ecological health and human needs. The project will use astronauts’ experiences to help others adopt more sustainable lifestyles.
Clearly, a desire to protect the planet is common among those who have left it. Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka has logged more cumulative days in space than anyone else. The allure of spaceflight kept him on the job for 28 years, but something even more powerful than gravity kept bringing him home.
“We are genetically connected to this planet,” he says. And to the best of our knowledge, Earth is unique in its ability to support life as we know it. The past decade of astronomy has shown us that we are one among billions of worlds in the Milky Way galaxy, but our tangled web of geology, ecology, and biology makes this strange rock the only one in reach that’s just right for humans.
There really is no place like home.
Contributing writer Nadia Drake once applied to be an astronaut and now feeds her curiosity by covering the cosmos. Photographer Martin Schoeller’s cover story on the Amazon’s Kayapo people appeared in the January 2014 issue of National Geographic.
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