Experiencing the universe, as recounted in six parts,
one for each of the "Six Minutes of Silence."
I. Blackout
Friday evening in Maryland
twenty-four minutes away
from Orion's Splashdown
in the Pacific, bringing with it,
the Artemis II crew home.
But first:
We (the sentient universe)
must endure six excruciating
minutes of unknowing
as We experience a full
communications blackout
with Artemis II's quartet.
The NASA commentator
on live-stream reminds
Us, the global viewer,
that:
A plasma screen will acrete
around the hull
of the ship,
per careful calculations.
Calculations based on the same
equations that Katherine Johnson,
Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan
first computed and documented in the '60s.
That this accumulated plasma
causes a temporary
— it's only temporary! —
disconnect.
That it is calculated to be
exactly
precisely
six minutes of darkness.
And that:
This is Expected.
This is Normal.
This is Necessary.
This is Science.
Earlier in the day,
print media had implored Us:
Take note: the commentators
will remind you tonight.
But we will now
remind you
in advance:
This.
Is.
Normal.
Do. Not. Fret.
Believe in Science.
Trust the Process.
And also,
Pray for their safe return.
There it is.
Science and Faith are one.
They were never separate.
We are reminded, again, today.
And so,
here in my living room.
I am fully, iteratively
logically prepared for
the phenomenon of reentry.
And I have also sent my prayers
like unmanned beacons
up through the heavens all day.
The Splashdown clock appears
on the upper corner
of my viewing screen,
a NASA YouTube live-stream.
The Earth as one draws breath a last time:
Six Minutes of Silence
begins for Orion
and its Artemis II crew inside.
Now We Wait.
And my heart clenches.
= = = =
II. Core Memory 1.0
As the clock ticks,
I am transported backward
via unconsenting time travel.
Whisked at thirty-five times
the speed of sound, I reenter
my sophomore year dorm room.
I am now nineteen, and I'd been,
on that Saturday morning,
preparing to celebrate the
arrival of Lunar New Year
— The Year of the Goat —
with my friends on campus.
But first, I was watching, alone,
the NASA Columbia shuttle's
Splashdown countdown on NBC,
with my wonky rabbit ear antenna
on my grainy 13" TV/VCR
set atop my noisy mini-fridge.
I bore witness,
in real-time as
We, Humanity, viewed
a comet-like light show.
The announcer said:
We are waiting on comms.
This is Normal.
We should hear from them again
in about six minutes.
Meanwhile, bright silvery light,
beautiful! luminous! trails
expanded in the sky,
a Fourth of July fireworks finale.
Oh wow!
I had held my breath in awe.
Humans are amazing.
All the while,
We waited.
We waited patiently,
confidently, for the astronauts
to share their first thoughts
upon regaining Air-to-Ground comms.
My mind recited, unprompted:
"And the rockets' red glare
The bombs bursting in air
gave proof through the night
that our flag was still there."
But it was not to be.
We learned that those
gorgeous sights,
those manmade shooting stars
were not planned.
That Columbia STS-107
had lost total
contact with us,
and us them,
permanently.
In the coming minutes
we heard with disbelief
from stunned TV anchors.
These voices now knew,
more than and before
NASA's own Mission Control,
that this was:
Not. Normal.
It was the shuttle Columbia,
broken into pieces.
Foam insulation tiles,
damaged upon launch,
had doomed the crew
from nine seconds into
their mission on Day 1.
Columbia's fragments
soared through the sky
as those fireballs
incinerate everything
and everyone aboard.
Wreckage scattered across
multiple states.
The forensic scene was perhaps
the biggest investigation radius
for a single non-war-related event
in the course of human history.
Our then President, 43 or W.,
confirmed the loss that day.
It took three days to find DNA
among the debris fields in Texas.
Eleven days post-explosion,
some remains of each explorer
had been recovered
with urgency, care and dignity.
These remnants of brave humans
were somberly transported
to Walter Reed Army Medical Center
in Washington, DC for analysis.
Returning these explorers' body parts
brought but a most shallow closure
to each of seven astronauts' families,
and to Us.
Those images,
and those voices
explaining the tragedy,
are etched, engrained in my soul.
I still hold the grief of this
universal loss, which befell Us
less than two years post-9/11.
Those of the generations
old enough to remember:
We all hold this weight.
And we have all inhaled,
embodied, become as one,
with the infinitesimally small,
nano fragments of those brave seven.
Genetics tells us:
We are 99.9% the same.
Religion tells us:
Dust to Dust.
Physics dictates:
Energy is never created nor destroyed.
Astronomers, and Poets, tell us:
We are all made of stars.
= = = =
III. Faith-and-Wait
I flash forward to today.
Now, here in my forties,
I am on my couch in the 'burbs.
I watch with hope, and fear.
I read those articles today,
the ones that revealed Orion,
named Integrity by its crew,
also has faulty insulation.
They face a one-in-twenty-odds
of devastation upon descent.
I'm not sure my psyche
nor soul could sustain
another Space Loss.
This time, though, I am not alone.
I hold my daughter's hand.
She holds mine back,
a rare instance of touch, of bonding.
She had homework to do,
as always, but I had told her:
Come.
Sit.
While she rolled her eyes
I went on: There is nothing
more important
than this moment.
So now, her head presses
against my side,
her body heavy on me.
She never does this anymore;
her closeness to me
is a distant memory.
We witness both the capsule's
black-out and the commentator's
intermittent quietude.
My voice frets back and forth,
part incantation,
part verbal worry stone:
"StaySafeStaySafeStaySafeStaySafe..."
I watch my heart rate
rise exponentially
from 66 to 112 BPM
on my Apple Watch.
(Biofeedback is a marvel.)
I hold her tight against me
as we watch, hushed.
I realize I'm squeezing her too hard
when she squeals, "Mom, Oww!!"
I stop referring to my watch.
I no longer need to see that
my heart is pounding at 200 BPM
to know it is.
It passes six minutes
and I do not see visuals return
on the screen within a screen
on Mission Control's large display.
OhNoOhNoOhNo
I chant.
ComeMonComeMonComeMon.
I sound like an auctioneer.
WE NEED COMMENTARY!
I yell.
PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE
I beg.
= = = =
IV. The Ring
Unlike in 2003, we have
the good fortune of many POVs.
We get more visual intel, and sooner.
Infrared, airborne, ground-based.
The first visual comes to Us
in shades of grey.
The capsule looks like
a pulsating spinning circle
surrounded by concentric rings
of visible energy.
Our fuzzy, trippy view now is
half Magic Eye book, half
hypnotizing movie-within-a-movie,
like in The Ring.
In other words, the 1990s
foretold this moment.
And like the horror film,
I can't stop staring.
And my life will never be
the same after watching it.
We see the Orion capsule
from a new angle, now strikingly
against blue, hurtling at speeds
close to or breaking 25,000 MPH.
After too long a pregnant pause
We finally hear auditory evidence
that Our Crew, our Kindness Heroes,
had made it through.
From Commander Reid Wiseman:
"What a journey! We are stable.
We have four green crew members."
Green. As in, good, safe, healthy.
PHEW!
= = = =
V. Jump Scare
What the commentators
and news articles failed to mention
while repeatedly talking about the
Six Minutes of Silence
is how the parachute system
or systems, plural, work.
I eject from the couch
I am standing in front of the TV
as if my proximity is remedy.
I am oddly quiet,
watching the stubby Hershey Kiss
without a paper tag
fall through whispy blue sky.
I manage: "Oh my gossssssh,"
a way to fill the dead air space.
My mind is running through
a million negative thoughts
while my heart reaches for hope.
I am blocking
my daughter's view:
"Mom, Move!"
The white parachutes deploy
looking like alien jellyfish
And they fill with air, phew!
And they seem operational.
I know my fear has won
when my shock at a positive sign
has me bursting into unvarnished joy:
"Hhhhh!" My voice breaks
as breath shoots out.
"Y A A A A A A A A A A Y!"
[I scream over an announcer
who helpfully, if unheard, says:
"They are going through
a series of parachutes...]
I continue hollering, like
the over-invested parent
on the gym bleachers that I am:
"That's HUGE! Good job! Good Job!"
I hear a male voice:
"And Houston, we're visual;
two chutes out the window."
"Phhoooooooooooooooooffffff"
I let out
the largest
longest
breath I may have ever breathed.
Including childbirth.
Female voice:
"We copy. We see them!"
Announcer:
"Time to Splashdown:
three minutes,
ten seconds."
Me: "WOW! Three more minutes?!"
Another deeeeeeeep exhale.
"It looks like they're almost at the water!"
A deep inhale.
Me, to the TV:
"Come'mon, Humanity! You got this!"
[Male voice:
"Passing through 10,000 feet..."]
And then here it is,
that thriller movie favorite.
Just when We had been lulled
into comfort, into confidence:
Jump Scare.
The two chutes sail up
and away from the craft.
Those life-saving chutes
just - poof! - Detach.
The capsule is falling.
"OhmyGodOhmyGod!"
I am screaming.
I cannot account for this:
"HHHHUHHHHH!!!!
Oh, was that supposed to happen?
What the heck is happening?
Was that a good thing????"
[Male voice, unheard by me:
Main cutes, deployed."]
At this point, we see red.
Or is it orange?
Orange maybe.
But, anyway,
floppy cloth on strings.
They're uninflated, for sure.
Limp, even.
Certainly not assuring me
that they are functional.
And I've fully
taken over narrating duties,
filling the silent air
where NASA has gone quiet:
"Was that good?"
Did they--
Did they fill?
OKAY - Come 'mon, come'mon!
Keep filling, please!!!"
And then the orange chutes
become three mushroom caps
puffy and clearly full of air and I say:
"Oh my GOSHHHHH!!!!
Oh. My-GOSH."
[Female voice:
"We see three good lookin' parachutes."]
Me: Another enormous whoosh of air.
[Intermingled with hyperventilating,
sniffling, and tears]
Now NASA's feed returns to
infrared black and white
and we see the colorful
parachutes turn white.
They are silently descending,
while the capsule emits...
puffs of flames.
We all know
those heat shields are faulty.
What gives?
Alarming.
"IS THAT OKAY????
I WOULD LIKE SOME
EXPLANATION!
From NASA!"
I scream
at the television
on the wall.
And then I remember.
I am a Mom.
A caretaker.
A guardian.
And as such,
I should be reassuring,
and not escalatory.
And so I say aloud
(mostly to myself):
"I assume those
[the scary flames]
are to slow their
rate of descent,
or something."
I aim to sound confident.
Fingers crossed.
I now pan my vision,
and my phone
(on recording mode)
over to my daughter.
She is beaming back at me,
wet shiny eyes,
tears hovering at the corners.
Soon, she swivels her head back,
to lock eyes on the screen.
She's been silent
this whole time.
We process information
differently
but we are
equally affected
by this moment.
Core Memory 2.0.
The video returns to color -
and we see vivid creamsicle
of the merry-go-round tops
against the deepest expanse
of lapis lazuli blue that
I've ever laid eyes on.
Another unashamed gasp from me:
"Ahhhhh!!!
Look how BLUE it is!"
I am so enchanted
that I miss the SPLASH.
Now I lose it:
"Oh my GOSH!
They are in the WATER!!!"
Oh my Gosh! THEY MADE IT!
OKAY! GO GET THEM!"
My daughter's face
breaks into a wide grin.
[Announcer:
"Integrity's Astronauts, back on Earth!"]
[Me: Unfiltered weeping]
"We DID it!
[Crying.]
[sniffles]
[More tears]
Me, warbling with pride:
"And THAT is why I pay taxes!"
= = = =
VI: Integrity has Landed
While bobbing in the Pacific
the next several hours slow to a crawl
as the bureaucracy and the
conditions of Earth enter the Chat.
The Sat Phone won't work.
Mission Control,
without subtlety,
inquires if the Astronauts
know how
to use a Push-to-Talk phone.
"Yes," they reply,
they do, in fact, know how
to depress two buttons at once.
A little workplace friction,
the human humor is welcome.
As the majestic
melds into the mundane
my heart beat lowers to normal
and I am filled with a glowing feeling
a warmth, a comfort,
a sense of the profound.
I am told by NASA,
that this experience
I am having is called:
"Moon Joy."
The poets, the photographers,
the scientists, the artists,
the adventurers, the brave ones,
and Integrity herself,
they are all home.
And with them,
they have gifted us:
Joy, compassion, curiosity,
kindness, intelligence,
and yes, Integrity.
May this be the sacred memory
that forever comes to mind
when I hear about re-entry.
Splash down:
Hope, with a capital
Heck Yeah!
is back.
