Have you noticed how the news has been running on two different tracks lately? The truth is, it probably always does, but every now and then the split suddenly seems more striking. On the one hand, there are the day-to-day ups and downs of human existence, everything from the weather to prognostications of war. That's the short-term track. On the other hand, there is the super-long-term track: the one that concerns itself with the history of the cosmos, where we came from and where we are going, the general alpha and omega of things. This month, side by side with Iraq and North Korea and the economy and Hideki Matsui, there has been quite a flurry of these grander stories, rendering them all curiously unimportant.

In a way, the Columbia disaster foreshadowed it. Not in itself, because what is the space shuttle, after all, but a high-tech workhorse toiling to and fro on everyday, low-level missions? Columbia never flew farther than the cosmos's doorstep. Yet when it broke up in flight Feb. 1 it prompted an outbreak of soul-searching, not just on the part of NASA officials in the United States, but around the world.

In a moment, humanity's entire mission in space came under fire: Where are we headed? What are we -- the space nations -- actually doing puttering back and forth to the International Space Station? Whatever it is, is it worth it? What about our plans and hopes for Mars? These are issues that need to be addressed soon, since they bear on the immediate future of both the space-shuttle program and the ISS. Yet implicit behind all the short-term uncertainty is the single long-term question: Where does our future lie?