01 · Space journey
Low Earth Orbit
Four hundred kilometers up, the sky stops being blue.
Nine minutes after liftoff the engines fall silent and everything floats. Below you the whole planet turns without a sound — oceans, storms, cities of light — while you circle it every ninety minutes at nearly twenty-eight thousand kilometers an hour.
Fly there in the journeyAt a glance
- Altitude
- 400 km
- Orbital speed
- 27,600 km/h
- One orbit
- 90 min
- Sunrises a day
- 16
- Felt gravity
- 0 g, free fall
Sixteen sunrises a day.
Every ninety minutes the sun climbs over the curve of the Earth. For a few seconds the thin skin of atmosphere lights up in a band of orange, then blue — the only thing between every living thing and the vacuum.
Flight plan
- T+0
Liftoff
Several times your own weight presses you into the seat as the rocket climbs through the thick lower atmosphere.
- T+2 min
Staging
The first stage falls away. Outside the window, the sky fades from blue to black.
- T+9 min
Engine cutoff
Silence. Anything not tied down begins to drift. You are in orbit — falling around the Earth at 7.7 kilometers every second.
- Day 1
Docking
Hours of careful chasing close the gap to the station, until the hatch opens onto a home that has been crewed without a break since 2000.
- Days 2–10
Life in orbit
Sleep strapped to a wall, watch storms from above, and see the aurora ripple beneath you instead of overhead.
- Return
Re-entry
The capsule meets the air at nearly 28,000 km/h. Plasma glows outside the window, parachutes bloom, and gravity returns all at once.
What you will see
The overview effect
Many astronauts describe the same shift: borders vanish, and the planet looks fragile, finite and shared.
Aurora from above
From orbit the aurora is a glowing curtain you look down on, drifting over the poles.
Cities at night
On the night side, coastlines and rivers are traced in the light of cities.
Where we are today
This one is already open. Private astronauts have flown to orbit and to the space station, and suborbital flights offer a few minutes of weightlessness above the 100 km line.
Fly there in the journey