The following years rapidly piled up further astonishments. Men circled the earth, then entered the lunar orbit and, on July 20, 1969, landed on the moon. While millions of us watched, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin squeezed out of the Eagle to explore the moon's surface.
By 1972, 24 men had travelled to the moon. Twelve had walked on it. Those were euphoric times.
There were subtexts to the space story, of course, which were less uplifting than its accomplishments. American-Russian competition drove the moon race, the costs were astronomical, and there were terrible accidents.
Space exploration continues today--by international teams, into frontiers as fascinating as ever. For many of us, however, the subject is familiar, almost passe. Perhaps we've forgotten what the journeys beyond Earth of the late 20th century gave us.
They gave us knowledge of "out there". They also gave us an entirely new look at the earth.
Now we can "visualize ourselves as living on a planet afloat in space," said journalist Richard Lewis, "a visualization . . . which, I believe, never existed before in human consciousness."
Listen to the Apollo 8 astronauts, speaking to Houston as they saw the earth this way for the first time:
"We see the earth now, almost as a disk. . . . The window is bigger than the earth right now."
"The earth is very bright."
The earth, "in one whole shot," said Apollo 12's Al Bean, "is amazing. . . . There's nothing holding it up. . . .Relative to you, it's just hanging out there and slowly going away."
"What a privilege," exclaimed Jim Irwin of Apollo 15, "to see the earth in its entirety. . . . "[like] a Christmas tree ornament hanging in the blackness."
Photographs of the earth as seen from space have been widely reproduced. (Roberta Bondar's Touching the Earth has a fine collection.) Many of them, such as the one of an earthrise over the lunar surface, are awe-inspiring. Viewing them, we echo: "It is very, very beautiful."
It's several centuries since Copernicus and Galileo dislodged us (unwillingly) from the idea that our earth is the centre of the universe. Space exploration has further diminished our planet in proportion to the realms beyond it. Yet, it has also restored some of the earth's glory, and a consciousness of its centrality--a consciousness not mixed with arrogance, hopefully, but with reverence and affection.
For Christians, the "very good" of Genesis and the Psalmist's awe over "the heavens and earth" are backed up with stunning new images. The astronauts described our home (the only one we've got at the moment) as an "oasis" in the black desert of space. With them, we see how it glimmers with light. We see its rich colours; we see how attentively our blue and white "marble" is served by the sun and the moon. We see its fragility, its resilience, its loveliness.
"We can [now] see our parent earth with detachment," wrote Anne Morrow Lindbergh, reflecting on the Apollo missions, "with tenderness, with some shame and pity, but at last also with love."
Dora Dueck is a writer from Winnipeg and a member of Jubilee Mennonite Church.