The astronaut is late: the train! He reports over the phone that he needs half an hour longer. Matthias Maurer travels from Cologne, which is around 400 kilometers, as long as from Earth to the International Space Station. On the ISS he flew around the earth at 28,000 kilometers per hour, orbiting it 16 times every day and seeing a sunrise or sunset every 90 minutes. And now the train.
Finally, Maurer is standing in the lobby of a Hamburg hotel; He takes three hours for the interview. When he gives a lecture abroad with the French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, they are celebrated like pop stars. Nobody recognizes him here. Luckily, he says.
Mr. Maurer, you were in space for 177 days. How did you perceive the view of the earth? The sky above is pitch black. The earth shines out of the darkness, a blue oasis with white clouds. When you fly out of the night into the sunrise, the atmosphere seems like a soap bubble – limited, beautiful and very vulnerable. You can immediately see what’s going wrong down there, such as the gaping wounds that the overexploitation of resources leaves on the surface. Or that we burn down virgin forests for farmland, destroying the Earth’s life support system. We treat it as if we had 20 spare planets.
Access to all STERN PLUS content and articles from the print magazine
ad-free
Already registered?
