Fall in love with a dog, and in many ways you enter a new orbit, a universe that features not just new colors but new rituals, new rules, a new way of experiencing attachment.
Astronauts have been stuck in low-Earth orbit, boldly going nowhere. American attempts to kick-start a new phase of lunar exploration have stalled amid the realisation that NASA's budget is too small for the job.
The digital world has been in a separate orbit from our medical cocoon, and it's time the boundaries be taken down.
The first two missions have some test objectives, some new capabilities that we're going to try to develop on orbit to possibly be used on later flights.
The opportunity to orbit the Earth, witnessing multiple sunrises and sunsets every day, looking back to our small blue life-sustaining jewel from a distance, gives me the greatest sense of anticipation.
The star S0-2 orbits around Sgr A* every 16 years and will go through its closest approach in 2018. That's an opportunity to test Einstein's General Relativity theory through very precise measurements of this star's short period orbit.
In the 20th century, we had a century where at the beginning of the century, most of the world was agricultural and industry was very primitive. At the end of that century, we had men in orbit, we had been to the moon, we had people with cell phones and colour televisions and the Internet and amazing medical technology of all kinds.
When we're on the space station, we orbit the Earth 16 times per day, which means we're constantly moving to and away from the sun. From light to shadow, the temperature swings by 300 degrees. Of course we're protected by the gear we wear, but you can definitely feel this temperature change.
I always try to be alert to the potential for repetition, for a decaying orbit with regard to my use of technique, etc.
Fortunately, most things around the supermassive black hole are just going to go around it. They're going to orbit it. They don't actually get sucked in.