The sky is not the limit but only the beginning |
The moon rose full and bright on Sunday evening the textures of its surface clearly visible to the naked eye. Close to the horizon, our near neighbour looks huge, thanks a trick of perception we call the moon illusion. In reality, the moon is no bigger at the horizon than it is high in the sky.
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Making its second appearance in the month - the first was on May 1 - it was a blue moon. Not only that, it was a micromoon, rising at its furthest point from the earth, although no one told our brains that because it still looked huge.
Watching it rise, it was hard not to feel awe and wonder and not just at the moon itself. A few days earlier, I'd interviewed someone who stands to get much closer to it than the rest of us earthlings.
Katherine Bennell-Pegg is Australia's first female astronaut. She's also our 2026 Australian of the Year. Our conversation only went for half an hour but I'm still feeling uplifted days later. Her story is all about finding a dream early and pursuing it with utmost focus.
From the little girl who gazed at the stars from her backyard, to the teenager who excelled at school and learned to fly before she could drive, who did her work experience at the Murriyang Radio Telescope at Parkes, to the young adult studying engineering, to the accomplished space engineer, Katherine never gave up on the dream of becoming an astronaut.
When the European Space Agency opened astronaut training to Australians with European or UK heritage in 2021, Katherine was one of thousands who applied and was selected. A year and a half of intense training followed. Centrifuges to mimic G forces, training to escape confined spaces under water, trips in the "vomit comet" aircraft to simulate zero gravity (she didn't vomit), even learning Russian. All while being the director of technology at the Australian Space Agency, working to develop our own space ecosystem, and the mother of young children.
Katherine survived all knockout rounds and graduated in 2024, becoming eligible to join future missions to the International Space Station.
Having worked on the design of the recent Artemis 2 journey around the moon and further into space than humans have gone before was thrilling for Katherine and her family.
"As an astronaut to see people that I've........