ISS

Warm night air. Bare feet on concrete sidewalk. I scan the western sky expectantly. At first, nothing. Then I see the International Space Station sailing slowly out of the west, a point of light rising above the willow oak across the street – a bright star, not the brightest but brighter than most – moving slowly and steadily across the sky toward the northeast. Moving, but not going lower, not going toward the horizon, but rather going into the northeast sky, fading, dimming. I glance away as a mini-van turns the corner and passes. One headlight is out. It’s Elisabeth. (Last night she moved from her rented house into a nearby apartment. Why has she returned to her former abode?) Look back at the northeastern sky; the moving star has vanished.

This is the third time I’ve seen the space station. I recall the first time I saw it: a shuttle was chasing it across the sky then, ferrying passengers to, or from, the station. On that night there were two bright, moving points of light that instantly winked out as shuttle and station flew into Earth’s shadow.

There’s nothing remarkable about seeing the space station fly overhead. And yet it is something that has never occurred in the 4.5 billion years of Earth’s history. A species on Earth has learned how to climb above the atmosphere and circle Earth in the vacuum of space every 90 minutes.

Baby steps. How long from Columbus’s voyage to the beginning of a new country? To be around in a hundred or so years: that should be an interesting time.