‘It really bent your mind’: The life-altering phenomenon astronauts experience in space

By Jackie Wattles, CNN

(CNN) — As the Artemis II astronauts hurtled around the moon during their historic flyby, basking in unprecedented views of the illuminated lunar far side, pilot Victor Glover described the visuals as “sci-fi.”

“You can actually see a majority of the moon,” he gushed as the crew watched meteors strike the moon’s surface. “It is the strangest looking thing that you can see so much on the surface.”

That experience — viewing such an alien terrain at close range as the sun gleamed over the horizon, highlighting the troughs and peaks of a foreign land — brought home for the crew how unique our home planet is.

As the crew regained contact with Earth and locked on with the glowing blue marble once again, Christina Koch marveled at lunar flyby experience but paid special homage to the comforts awaiting back home.

“We will explore. We will build ships. We will visit again. We will construct science outposts,” Koch said. “We will inspire — but ultimately, we will always choose Earth. We will always choose each other.”

The astronauts’ expressions of admiration and longing for Earth echo a long history of space explorers gaining new appreciation for their home planet.

It’s called the “overview effect,” a term coined by science author and philosopher Frank White in 1987. It refers to a shift in perspective that occurs when humans are given the chance to view Earth in the context of its cosmic backdrop — driving home how perfectly suited the planet is for our habitation and how unforgiving the great beyond appears.

Koch described the phenomenon from her experience aboard the International Space Station, which orbits much closer to home than the moon at just about 200 miles (about 320 kilometers) high.

“What you realize is every single person that you know is sustained” by the thin band of atmosphere, which is visible in its entirety from space,” Koch previously said of her experience at the space station. “Everything else outside of it is completely inhospitable. You don’t see borders, you don’t see religious lines, you don’t see political boundaries. All you see is Earth and you see that we are way more alike than we are different.”

The sensation has been reported by astronauts through generations.

Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, a veteran of four spaceflights from his time as an astronaut, said that Koch’s words during Artemis II resonated with him.

“I did hear the emotion — and she’s right,” Kelly said on CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront. “We will always choose Earth and we have to. The Earth is an island in our solar system, and there is no place else for us to go.”

‘Some larger purpose’

Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, who is experiencing his first spaceflight aboard Artemis II, delivered similar remarks noting the awe Monday’s lunar flyby inspired.

“You know from your experience of seeing the Earth from space how it just seems different,” said Hansen while speaking with NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman.

“When we were on the far side of the moon, looking back at Earth, you really felt like you weren’t in a capsule. You’d been transported to the far side of the moon. And it really just bent your mind. It was an extraordinary human experience. We’re so grateful for it.”

White told NASA on a podcast in 2019 that he began to conceptualize the overview effect even before speaking to astronauts about the phenomenon, as he imagined what it would be like to peer back at the fragile Earth from the vacuum of space.

Space enthusiasts often pitch our future in outer space as an inevitability — the result of an innate human drive to explore and pursue new frontiers. But White makes the case for deeper questioning.

“We explore outer space to benefit ourselves as humans,” White told NASA’s Gary Jordan. “Is there some larger purpose we’re fulfilling? And I asked myself, are we doing anything to benefit the universe?”

“What can we do to justify our existence, other than helping ourselves?” White had wondered. “So that was the beginning of my quest for a broader understanding of human space exploration.”

No borders and a thin blue line

Viewing the Earth from space, White highlights, drives home that the borders that mark our maps are largely imaginary.

“What the astronauts were telling me was, ‘I knew before I went into orbit, or went to the moon, that there weren’t any little dotted lines,’” White said. “But it’s knowing intellectually versus experiencing it. And so, there’s also the striking thinness of the atmosphere, something that they see.”

“Star Trek” actor William Shatner, who took a brief trip to suborbital space in 2021, had a visceral reaction to seeing the small blue blanket of air from the vantage point of space.

In an interview with CNN, Shatner said that when he witnessed “the blackness of space. There were no dazzling lights. It was just palpable blackness. I believed I saw death.”

Like Kelly, he said the visual gave him a strong sense that humans should be better stewards of our home planet.

“I thought about how we’re killing everything,” he said. “I felt this overwhelming sadness for the Earth.”

Before the Artemis II mission, Glover, who has also ventured to the ISS on previous missions, said that returning to Earth after such an experience leaves astronauts with a choice.

“Are you going to try to live your life a little differently?” Glover told NASA. “Are you going to really choose to be a member of this community of Earth?”

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