Orbital

A team of astronauts aboard the International Space Station observe Earth in all its beauty and fragility, circling the planet sixteen times a day. As they watch continents, storms, and seasons unfold below, news from home reminds them of love, loss, and humanity’s vulnerability. Far from Earth, they have never felt more connected to it—and begin to question what life, and the planet itself, truly mean without one another.

Life on our planet as you’ve never seen it before

A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.

Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction.

The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part – or protective – of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?

‘Our unanimity about Orbital recognises its beauty and ambition. It reflects Harvey’s extraordinary intensity of attention to the precious and precarious world we share’ Edmund de Waal, Chair of the 2024 Booker Prize judges