How the war looks from space
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 6 April 2022
⏱️ 25 minutes
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Summary
Rule No 1 in space is 'don't rock the boat' - and certainly don't talk about politics. But Putin’s bombs are visible from the International Space Station, and a war of words over Ukraine may have put joint efforts in space in real jeopardy.
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Guests:
- Col. Terry Virts (ret), former commander of the International Space Station.
- Jacqui Goddard, Miami Correspondent, The Times.
Host: Manveen Rana.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Everywhere you look on the news, on social media, horrifying images of death and destruction, |
| 0:12.0 | a bleeding out of Ukraine, it's a war that can't be ignored, even it seems, from space. |
| 0:21.2 | People always say, well astronauts don't see borders, you know, let's hold hands in |
| 0:24.6 | St. Kumbaya, like back in the 60s. The reality is, I did see borders. I saw bombs going off in |
| 0:30.1 | Ukraine. You can actually see politics from space. For the past 23 years, the International |
| 0:37.4 | Space Station has come to be a symbol of cooperation between Russia and the West, but could wall |
| 0:45.2 | and escalating tensions on Earth spill over into space. |
| 0:57.2 | You're listening to stories of our times from the times and the Sunday times. I'm Manvin |
| 1:02.7 | Rana. Today, war from above. The view from the International Space Station. |
| 1:16.4 | The view of the planet is so spectacular and the first time I saw it in daylight, |
| 1:21.6 | I launched it four in the morning, we were flying over the North Atlantic and the sun was rising. |
| 1:26.3 | That's Terry Vertz, a retired NASA astronaut and the former commander of the International Space |
| 1:32.8 | Station. And I remember looking out and seeing this blue band of sun rise and it was like the most |
| 1:40.4 | beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. It was actually a shade of blue that I had never |
| 1:44.2 | seen before. It's hard to describe with words, but it's pretty awesome. And you're also in the |
| 1:50.3 | incredibly unusual position of being able to describe what it feels like and what it looks like to |
| 1:55.2 | look down on Earth at a time where there's a war going on. Because that's what happened to you in 2014 |
| 2:00.3 | back when Crimea was being invaded. What does that look like from space? My last mission was right |
| 2:06.0 | in the middle of some really bad times between the West and Russia to say the least. I remember one |
| 2:10.7 | winter night in 2015 looking down through the Russian window in their service module with one of |
| 2:16.8 | the cosmonaut friends of mine who was there with me. Over Eastern Ukraine, you could see bombs going |
| 2:22.0 | off. They were like red flashes and it was so profound to be looking at people being killed on |
... |
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