With Integrity

In 1990, the Milky Way Galaxy was 13.61 billion years old, and I was eight. My family lived on a dairy farm far away from significant light pollution, so my views of the ancient heavens were sweeping and brilliant, with shooting stars a regular feature of the nighttime sky.

Four years after the Challenger disaster, NASA was once again launching space shuttles from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and in my grade 2 classroom, we watched footage of Discovery lifting off with the Hubble Space Telescope on board. The crew of five astronauts soared 621 kilometres above the earth — the highest a shuttle would ever fly. Two months later, we learned the cutting-edge telescope had a cataract, but I was still mesmerized by its initial glimpses of distant constellations, however blurry.

Lego released its first space shuttle in 1990. The 392-piece set included an astronaut minifigure, as well as two technicians and a transfer vehicle, complete with NASA’s...