Look, up in the sky

Space flight used to be big news, but after 40 years, it has become old hat.
Especially lately, space flight has been knocked off the front pages and out of the opening minutes of TV broadcasts by other stories -- stories of terrorism and war mostly.
But this day, Christmas Eve, seems as appropriate as any to eschew commentary on such worldly affairs and focus our attention heavenward, toward the International Space Station.
Almost without most of us noticing, the ISS, as NASA refers to the station, has become a permanently inhabited satellite of earth.
The station has been in orbit a little over three years and has been continuously inhabited by crews for more than a year.
Just last week, Commander Frank Culbertson, Pilot Vladimir Dezhurov and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin returned to Earth on the space shuttle Endeavour after spending nearly four months in orbit. The were replaced by Russian Yuri Onufrienko; Astronaut Daniel Bursch, a Navy officer, and astronaut Carl Walz, the fourth team to live on the space station. Expedition Four will spend almost six months in orbit, coming home in May.
During that time the crew will continue construction work on the space station and will conduct experiments, including one that will study colon and ovarian cancer cells.
Reality intrudes: Even in space, however, the last crew could not escape what was happening 240 miles below them. On September 11, crew members of Expedition Three reported seeing smoke billowing from the World Trade Centers.
While they can see us, we can see them. The space station is visible from the Earth, depending on its orbit and the conditions.
On this day, we wanted to be able to tell our readers what time they might be able to spot the ISS. Alas, the last opportunity this year to see the station from northeastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania was about 6:30 p.m. yesterday.
But if you were in Bethlehem tomorrow, you would be able to look about 40 degrees above the southern horizon and you would see a steady white pinpoint of light moving slowly across the sky. It would disappear four minutes later, low in the southwest sky.
It would not be a sign such as another star reported in that area two millennia ago. But it is a sign that mankind continues to try to learn more about the Earth and the beings that inhabit it. And it is a welcome sign that men and women of different nations can join together in peaceful pursuits aimed at making this a better place to live.