Astronaut Danny Olivas launches ‘Space for Everyone’
Danny and Marie Olivas and their family. Photo courtesy NASA Danny Olivas was 248 miles above the Earth. As an astronaut and crew member on the STS-117 Space Shuttle Atlantis mission in 2007, Olivas was among the select few—562 out of the 108 billion people who have ever lived, to be exact—to ever see our earthly home whole, in truly full view, a blue orb aloft in the vastness of space. Olivas was awed by the sheer beauty of what he beheld. Like any faraway son, he took special care to look for his hometown, El Paso, Texas and was struck at how it blended with neighboring Juarez, the cities together engulfed by the Chihuahua desert. His experience in space forever altered Olivas. More than a dozen years later, he remembers what he saw and felt almost viscerally, each and every day. But the main impression Olivas carries with him is less about celestial bodies and geographical perspective, and more about his astonishment for humankind — the wondrous accomplishments of this species, floating together through the backdrop of a seemingly endless void, contradicted by our maddening capacity to see ourselves as separate. “Because we are out here by ourselves. This is rock,” said Olivas…
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