So, you want to see a miracle.
Apparently, the universe has decided to grace Central Texas with its presence next week. Or, more accurately, the NASA international space station has. Get your lawn chairs ready, because we’ve been scheduled for a dose of mandatory, state-sanctioned wonder.
Here’s the bulletin from on high: on Tuesday, September 30th, and Wednesday, October 1st, you’re supposed to stop what you’re doing, go outside, and crane your neck at the sky like a confused turkey.
The Tuesday show is the appetizer. The warm-up act. From 8:43 PM to 8:46 PM, for a blistering three minutes, you can watch a dot move. The International Space Station, our very expensive orbiting laboratory, will pop up on the West-Northwestern horizon and climb about halfway up the sky before vanishing. A solid 42 degrees, for you protractor-wielding enthusiasts out there.
But Wednesday. Oh, Wednesday is the main event.
This is the one they’ll be talking about. The one you’re supposed to feel something about. From 7:55 PM to 8:01 PM, you get a full six-minute flyover. They’re even promising clear skies. The ISS will slice directly over our heads, a perfect 90-degree pass from Northwest to Southeast. At 7:58 PM, for one brief, shining moment, it will be the brightest thing up there besides the moon.
A perfect, silent, man-made star.
I’m supposed to tell you how incredible this is. I’m supposed to wax poetic about human achievement and the spirit of exploration. I’m supposed to sell you on the profound feeling of connection you’ll get from seeing the international space station from earth with your own two eyes.
Let’s be real. It’s a dot. A very fast, very expensive dot, but a dot nonetheless.
You see, the ISS is visible from the ground because it’s playing a neat trick with the sun. When it’s dusk down here, and we’re all settling in for the night, the station is still 250 miles up. It’s high enough to catch the last rays of sunlight and reflect them back down at us. It’s a giant, solar-paneled mirror hurtling through the twilight.
And I do mean hurtling. The speed of the international space station is a blistering 17,500 miles per hour. That’s five miles a second. It laps the entire planet every 90 minutes. The astronauts up there see 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets every single day. I can barely handle one.
It’s all just a bit much. A bit… abstract.
And good luck trying to use one of those "international space station tracker" apps on your phone to pinpoint its location. I’ve tried. Half the time the compass is pointing at my neighbor’s satellite dish and the other half it’s trying to get me to buy a subscription to identify constellations that, I’m pretty sure, are just smudges on my screen. It’s a mess.
It’s just a PR event. A way for the government to justify the international space station cost and remind us that our tax dollars are, in fact, in space. No, that’s not right. ‘PR event’ makes it sound manufactured. This is real. It’s a multi-billion dollar piece of hardware with actual human beings inside, sealed in a can, whipping through a vacuum at a speed that would tear you to pieces.
And we’re supposed to stand in our backyards and… what, exactly? Applaud? Take a blurry photo with our phones?
Maybe I’m just jaded. Maybe I’m the one with the problem. Perhaps a collective moment of staring at the sky is exactly what a society obsessed with staring down at little glowing rectangles needs. A brief reminder that there’s something else going on. Something bigger than your mortgage, your car payment, or that stupid argument you had on social media.
The question is, what is the international space station used for, really, in that moment? It’s not about science or microgravity experiments. For those six minutes, its only purpose is to be seen. To be a focal point. A silent, non-commercial, non-political, universally-visible thing.
And people will go out. They’ll bring their kids. They’ll point and say, “Look, there it is.” They’ll feel a brief, fleeting connection to the seven billion other ants on this rock who could, in theory, be looking at the same dot at the same time. Offcourse, most of them won’t be. They’ll be busy. But the potential is there.
They’ll watch it glide from one horizon to the other, a testament to what we can do when we throw enough money and brains at a problem. And then it will disappear.
And they’ll go back inside, and the kids will ask for a snack, and the emails will still be waiting. That’s the part they never mention in the press releases, the part that always gets me. The silence after it’s gone, the immediate return to the mundane, the…
So, yeah. Go outside next Wednesday around 7:55 PM. Look up. You’ll see it. The international space station visible against the dying light. A bright, fast-moving dot. It’s an impressive sight.
Just don’t expect it to change your life.
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So, A Dot Moves. Big Deal.
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Six minutes. That's the whole show. Six minutes to stare at a light in the sky, feel profound for a second, and then get back to the crushing reality of your own life. Don't blink. You might miss the part where it all starts to make sense. Because I guarantee you, it won't.
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