According to NASA, it “shifts the way astronauts view and think about our planet and life itself.”
Garan went “more than 71 million miles in 2,842 orbits of our planet,” or 178 days, while in space.
Even with this long voyage, the view of Earth from orbit was what made “certain things become undeniably clear.”
In a Big Think interview, Garan stated: “We keep trying to deal with issues such as global warming, deforestation, biodiversity loss as stand alone issues when in reality they’re just symptoms of the underlying root problem and the problem is, that we don’t see ourselves as planetary.”
Garan went on: “When I looked out of the window of the International Space Station, I saw the paparazzi like flashes of lightening storms, I saw dancing curtains of auroras that seemed so close it was as if we could reach out and touch them and I saw the unbelievable thinness of our planet’s atmosphere.”
In that instant, he explained, he had a “sobering realization.”
