The Most Important Picture Ever Taken

If you wish to be pedantic (and I usually do), I should say "The most important picture taken to date." But that's not the point.

The point is, if you go back a couple thousand years you'll find large groups of people worshipping the planets. Without the Sun there would be no life, so clearly it must be a god. So too, the Moon and the Wanderers, with the myriad stars as their attendants. From their movements could be determined the state of the world and portents of things to come.

Return to the present, and our conceptions of the heavens (and of God) are dramatically different. We've gotten used to dramatic images sent from far away spacecraft and don't bat an eye at more than 10 years of continuous human presence in space (more than 25 years total), when we think of it at all. For some time now, the International Space Station has been the third brightest object in the sky, surpassed only by the Sun and the Moon.

If you showed our ancestors what our hands have wrought, they would literally worship it! If that does not qualify as a wonder, I don't know what is. And we have the pics to prove it!



Photo credit: ESA/NASA/Roscosmos. Click for larger views of the whole series.

As of the penultimate Space Shuttle flight (STS-134), construction of the station is effectively finished, and as a result of some unique timing and some very impressive inter-agency work they were able to get a series of shots while the Shuttle was still attached. Not only that, but it has 4 of the currently operating visiting vehicles present: The Shuttle, Russia's Soyuz and Progress, and ESA's ATV. (Japan's HTV is missing, having recently departed.)

I honestly believe that that image is more awe-inspiring than anything humanity has accomplished to date, and it seems like people don't care. I had someone honestly ask me last week if NASA was cancelling the human spaceflight program. Just about every day I see an article in the news talking about replacements for the Shuttle, and none of them seem to get it.

It's this.

This is the next stage. This is what the Shuttle has been working to build for the last 10 years, and now that it's done the Shuttle can be retired with a secure legacy.

Oh, sure, there are other crew vehicles in development, and we're working on plans for further exploration as successors to the ISS, but this is the next phase, and it's important. This is where we are learning to live and work in space for long durations, and if we are to continue going on farther and longer missions, the research we are doing now is what will make it possible. There's a reason they made it a National Laboratory, after all.

When our ancestors look back on our achievements, I think that this is what they will point to in amazement at what we were able to produce with what resources we have. Next time you have a clear night get out and look at it, and wave to our representatives in our first real foothold off of this planet. After a recent reboost, it's now easier to see than ever! You can get list of upcoming passes from Heaven's Above (though if you're not in the Twin Cities, you should probably set your location first).