NASA astronaut Thomas Marshburn has shared a breathtaking image taken from the International Space Station (ISS) showing the curvature of Earth as well as part of the Caribbean.
Marshburn captured the photo during a spacewalk last month before sharing it on Twitter at the weekend.
In his tweet, the experienced astronaut described the Caribbean Sea, with its beautiful blue colors, as “a candidate for the second favorite view of the Earth from space,” adding that an astronaut’s favorite view is of course the one of their home nation.
A candidate for the second favorite view of the Earth from space: the Caribbean Sea, seen here during a spacewalk below the @JAXA_en external experiment platform. Everyone’s favorite view? Their home country! pic.twitter.com/5mvAGUbFKI
— Tom Marshburn (@astromarshburn) January 7, 2022
Those familiar with the Caribbean should be able to spot southeast Cuba at the bottom of Marshburn’s shot, though the country’s capital city of Havana is obscured by the station’s solar arrays.
The picture was captured around 250 miles above Earth, with the wide view showing off the curvature of Earth. As Marshburn points out in his tweet, the image also includes Japan’s external experiment platform, seen to the right of the photo.
Marshburn took the image during his fifth spacewalk, with his previous four taking place during ISS visits in 2013 and 2009. The American astronaut spent 6 hours and 32 minutes outside the station together with his colleague, Kayla Barron, who was on her very first spacewalk.
The pair arrived at the ISS in November along with NASA’s Raja Chari and Matthias Maurier of the European Space Agency. They’ll stay aboard the orbiting outpost for around six months, returning in late April.
While astronauts aboard the ISS spend most of their time working on science experiments, occasional spacewalks are also essential for maintaining and upgrading the station, with the unique vantage point also providing an excellent opportunity for Earth observation work and photo captures.
French astronaut Thomas Pesquet regularly posted amazing Earth shots during a recent stay at the ISS, and he also took time out to explain the kind of planning required to capture the impressive images.
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.