(Astronaut) Nicole Stott - Back to Earth : what life in space taught me about our home planet--and our mission to protect it

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B ILL ANDERS AND HIS TWO APOLLO 8 CREWMATES , Jim Lovell and Frank Borman, were the first human beings to leave the relative safety of low Earth orbit and travel a quarter of a million miles out into space to circle the Moon. They were also the first to witness, in person, the beautiful spectacle of our colorful planet, full of life and set against the stark and seemingly endless black backdrop of space, rising in stunning contrast above the lifeless surface of the Moon.

Anders snapped a photo and became the first human to capture a photograph of this event, an iconic image now famously and appropriately known as Earthrise. Lucky for us, the astronauts did not keep this vision to themselves. Instead, on Christmas Eve of 1968, while still in lunar orbit, they shared it with all of us back here on Earth. This single image forever shifted humanitys perspective on who we are and our place in the universea simple yet powerful reminder of the undeniable reality of our ultimate interconnectivity and interdependence.

We are all Earthlings.

In 2019, we celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo space missions that took human beings off our planet and to the Moon. I believe its no coincidence that 2019 also marked the forty-ninth anniversary of both the first Earth Day and the formation of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Earthrise, the beautiful image of our home planet with its naturally perfect life support system, protected by a thin blue line of atmosphere, has been a symbol of the environmental movement ever since the Apollo 8 crew first shared it. But do we still appreciate its significance?

In 2009, forty years after I watched with my family on our black-and-white TV as the Apollo 11 astronauts walked on the Moon, I flew to space for the first time and experienced my own Earthrise moment.

As astronauts, we do our best to prepare for both the planned activities of our mission and the unexpected events that might happen along the way. Included in that preparation is communicating with our astronaut colleagues to learn as much as we can from their spaceflight experiencesincluding what it was like for them to see Earth from space. For some reason, I thought I could prepare for that special space-bound experience by looking at pictures and videos. Wrong.

Let me just say that the perspective offered through the windows of the spacecraft was so overwhelmingly impressive and beautiful that it far exceeded my highest expectations. No picture, no video, and no conversation with others who had flown before could have prepared me for what I saw with my own eyes and felt with my own soul.

The view was crystal clear and glowing. The simplest way I can explain it to you is the same way I explained it to my seven-year-old son the first time I called him from space. I told him to imagine he had the brightest light bulb ever, splattered with all of the colors we know Earth to be, and that when he turned it on, it was almost too bright to look at. All the Earths colors glowed with an iridescence and translucence Id never seen before.

My Earthrise moment came while looking out the windows of the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station (ISS). Absorbed in that view of a translucent Earth, I realized something Id actually known all along, something Id probably learned in kindergarten, in 1968, the same year as the Apollo 8 missionwe live on a planet!

I found it strange that this simple truth could be so revelatory. But then again, how often do any of us contemplate its profundity? While its cool that nearly everyone can see Earthrise every day, the downside is that we seem to have become desensitized to its significance. Since Bill Anders took that first photograph, Earthrise, images of the Earth from space have become ubiquitous. Through the wonders of technology, we see these images in lots of places every dayin advertisements, on flight tracker screens during airline travel, and through apps like Google Earth on our smartphones.