When I consider your heavens

• Thought for the week

By Peter Milsom, June 1, 2020

The SpaceX rocket, Endeavour, has taken two NASA astronauts, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, into orbit. It’s the first time since the space shuttles were retired in 2011 that an American crew has made the journey from American soil. The SpaceX crew capsule docked at the International Space Station 19 hours after launch. The hope is that this will be the first step in a programme which will take people to the Moon and then to Mars.

Since November 2000 the International Space Station has been occupied continuously by 240 people from 19 countries. An international crew of 6 people live and work there while travelling at a speed of 5 miles per second, orbiting the earth every 90 minutes. In 24 hours, the space station makes 16 orbits of Earth, the equivalent of going to the Moon and back, travelling through 16 sunrises and sunsets.

The first man to journey into outer space was Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who completed one orbit of the earth in April 1961. Later Nikita Khrushchev, the President of the Soviet Union, said “Gagarin flew into space, but didn’t see any god there.” However, many people who have travelled into space have found it to be an awesome experience.

On Christmas Eve 1968 the crew of Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the Moon, made a live television broadcast from lunar orbit, showing pictures of the Earth and the Moon. Jim Lovell said, “The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring, and it makes you realise just what you have back there on Earth.” William Anders said, “For all the people on Earth the crew of Apollo 8 has a message we would like to send you.” Then the crew took turns reading from the first chapter of book of Genesis, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

King David, like most of us, never travelled into space but was moved to worship as he gazed in wonder at the heavens. In Psalm 8 he wrote, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honour. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”