The International Space Station flies across and orbits the planet around fifteen times per day at speeds of 27 thousand kilometres per hour or 17 thousand miles per hour. It was launched in 1998 and it is up there in low-earth orbit conducting scientific research with a multinational crew of cosmonauts and astronauts. Among other things, it will help to provide testing spacecraft systems and equipment for future missions to the Moon and Mars.
On clear nights it is possible to
see the space station as it crosses the night sky looking like a bright star.
Amateur and professional photographers and astronomers have pictured it as it
makes its way across countries and continents. The photographs are stunning,
and some pictures show in some detail the football-stadium sized space station
high up in our skies. I have the ISS app on my phone, and it alerts me to the
exact position of the space station in real time and it also shows via a camera
mounted outside the earth below as it passes above.
From the beginning of the space
programme, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, Astronauts Alan Shephard, and John Glenn and
many other men and women have seen the earth far below as they orbited the
planet. Those who travelled further out like the Apollo Astronauts saw the earth
further away as they went to the Moon. As she reached the edge of our family of
planets, Voyager, launched in 1977 turned her camera back towards earth after
40 plus years flying, and our sun was a tiny light way off in the distance.
In 2014, German Astronaut
Alexander Gerst, one of the crew in the ISS, was flying over the region of
Israel and the Gaza Strip and he saw the rocket attacks 400 kilometres below.
He reflected; “We don’t see any borders from space. We just see a unique planet
with a thin, fragile atmosphere, suspended in a vast hostile darkness. From up
here it is crystal clear that on earth we are one humanity, we eventually share
the same fate.”
When Canadian Astronaut Chris
Hadfield was in command of the ISS during Expedition 35 in 2013, although he
and the crew had very important work to do during their mission, including an
emergency spacewalk, he treated us to breath taking photos taken from the
cupola of the ISS. His pictures and those of the other astronauts clearly show
us our beautiful, colourful, and fragile world. From the aurora borealis and
the poles, to the oceans and rivers, to the eye of the hurricanes in August,
the world is seen in all its sacred beauty. Thanks to the crew of the ISS,
together with the space agencies, we see sunsets and sunrises, and towns and
city lights at night. Our world is so pretty from the north to south and from
east to west. And it is so tiny compared with other planets, stars, and
galaxies in the heavens.
We need to take care of our
planet. Over the years we have been warned time and again that we must protect
the planet, and we are at a critical juncture now. Down here, we fight for land
and territory and the result is the poor and the weak are far and away the
losers. The terrible war where Russia has invaded Ukraine is affecting us all
but most especially the ordinary Ukrainian women, men, and children who have been bombed,
killed, injured, and displaced. Daily we see the results of massive violence
and how it destroys lives and communities and homes. If this goes on there will
eventually be no winners because we could lose everything. There will be
nothing left.
We human beings form ourselves
into families and communities, but we are called to share and respect what each
one has. High up in space there are no borders. At the end of his Angelus
address from St. Peter’s Square today, Pope Francis warns us that if war
continues and destruction is allowed to rage, we will not have a world to live
in. He says; “Before the danger of self-destruction, may humanity understand
that the moment has come to abolish war, to erase it from human history before
it erases human history.”
All of those killed in this war
and other wars and conflicts were some mother’s daughter or son. Who knows,
they could have been the scientist to bring about a cure for cancer. Each child
has the potential to reach for the stars and how many children has this been
stolen from by the evils of war?
Let us pray for a renewed respect
for each other as citizens of the planet and strive to see what we have in common
rather than what divides us. We have nowhere else to go right now until we
stand before God at the end of our lives. Let us pray for peace.