NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in March as commander of the SpaceX Crew-8 mission.
During his time aboard the orbital outpost, Dominick has been sharing some wonderful images of both inside and outside the ISS.
Keen photographers will be pleased that the astronaut is also sharing the camera settings that he used for each of the shots. A recent one is a real beauty and shows the moon above Earth just before sunrise.
1/ A sliver of a moon rises out of noctilucent clouds and appears to look towards the horizon awaiting the imminent sunrise.
1/250s, f5.6, ISO 6400, 170mm (50 to 500mm lens), cropped pic.twitter.com/6vq9NfdXx0
— Matthew Dominick (@dominickmatthew) July 6, 2024
This creative image from the interior of an ISS module sees Dominick using a flash to experiment with “light painting.”
No fireworks on ISS so we used camera flashes instead. Experimented with “light painting” today.
15 sec, f22, 24mm, ISO 500. Turned off the lights. Manually actuated our own flashes. Ambient light only from computers and experiment LEDs.
1/ Floating through pic.twitter.com/fe8arQh3aJ
— Matthew Dominick (@dominickmatthew) July 4, 2024
In this set of images, Dominick shows how different shutter speeds can affect how Earth appears in an image.
A common question theme when posting night time images from the ISS is exposure length. There are guidelines for shooting astrophotography from earth but what happens when shooting at orbital speeds? Thread shows images with 6400 ISO, f1.4, and exposures ranging from 10s to 1/4s pic.twitter.com/3YNwTeoOX7
— Matthew Dominick (@dominickmatthew) July 1, 2024
Here’s a stunning night shot from the ISS showing the Nile River leading to the Mediterranean Sea.
Flying up the Nile River to the Mediterranean Sea.
Need to subtract the dark frame and other processing later. It was awesome to see on such a clear night. pic.twitter.com/fMucJdfw74
— Matthew Dominick (@dominickmatthew) June 30, 2024
This one shows an astronaut peering out of a window on the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft docked at the ISS. Dominick has also been experimenting with time-lapses, which you can watch below.
A short timelapse made from the individual images taken when finding the right light for the image above. Faint blue light from a moon just starting to crest the horizon in front of the ISS illuminates Dragon. pic.twitter.com/QeTJwYSAb3
— Matthew Dominick (@dominickmatthew) June 29, 2024
Here, Dominick puts the camera on a monopod and uses a slow 1/5 shutter speed to create the feeling of movement in an image snapped from inside one of the station’s many modules.
Zooming through the lab on ISS. pic.twitter.com/6jzajAyy1E
— Matthew Dominick (@dominickmatthew) June 28, 2024
This image shows part of the ISS with a dramatic backdrop of star trails.
Experimenting with long exposures trying to capture star trails with the beautiful structures of the ISS. In the last of five 30 second exposures the sun cracked the horizon creating the brilliant blue on the service module solar arrays. 5 stacked images, 24mm, f4, ISO 800. pic.twitter.com/eyX92X2CoY
— Matthew Dominick (@dominickmatthew) June 25, 2024
Finally, check out this wonderful time-lapse shot showing the docked Starliner spacecraft with an aurora in the distance.
Timelapse video of aurora streaming behind Starliner taken from a Dragon window with Butch and Suni in the window of Starliner. Their flashlights light up the cabin.
0.5 second interval, f 1.4, 6400 ISO, 1/4 second exposure, 24mm lens. pic.twitter.com/gZuxYZu0Af
— Matthew Dominick (@dominickmatthew) June 16, 2024
Another past inhabitant of the ISS also earned a reputation for taking jaw-dropping photographs. French astronaut Thomas Pesquet usually turned his lens toward Earth 250 miles below, capturing gorgeous images that perfectly encapsulated the beauty of our planet.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.