Sleeping satellite

Something is coming.

Hurtling across the universe at speeds of 5 miles per second to make its way home after 20 years, it is unstoppable. In a few hours the satellite will slam into the dense atmosphere and spectacularly break into a hundred fiery pieces.

I look up into the night sky and bathe gently in the silver rays. A trillion stars play silently above.

As I tilt my head upwards, an image flutters into my mind (stranger things have happened to me on a new moon but we won’t go there). I wonder about what the Earth would look like from all that way and how tiny we would appear. I picture the footprints left in the moon’s dusty terrain up there on that day in 1969 which remain to this day, untouched. A constant reminder of how a small step for man can be a giant leap for mankind.

Throughout history, people have been making their own indelible marks on the world a little closer to home every single day. Some footprints are celebrated with a fanfare of trombones, bass drums and confetti cannons exploding over a mass of onlookers, whilst others are less conspicuous, but none the less, change the course of history forever.

We are the stars on Earth and have the opportunity to shine just as brightly!