Over his three previous missions to the International Space Station (ISS), NASA astronaut Don Pettit earned a reputation for having a keen eye when it comes to photographing Earth and beyond.
Since arriving at the ISS on his fourth orbital mission earlier this month, Pettit, who at 69 is NASA’s oldest active astronaut, has wasted little time in grabbing the station’s cameras to capture and share fresh dazzling imagery shot from 250 miles above Earth.
In his latest work posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday, Pettit shared some sublime and highly artistic shots showing moonlight reflecting off of locations in the Amazon basin in South America.
“Somewhere over the Amazon basin, shooting photos of cities at night, I noticed the light from a near-full moon reflecting off of the meandering rainforest rivers,” Pettit wrote in the post, describing how the waterways appeared as “flowing silver snakes” and “glowing golden claws.”
Moonshine from space. Somewhere over the Amazon basin, shooting photos of cities at night, I noticed the light from a near-full moon reflecting off of the meandering rainforest rivers. In the cool moon-ish light these rivers became flowing silver snakes. When the moonlight was… pic.twitter.com/SGIUAJLhpP
— Don Pettit (@astro_Pettit) September 24, 2024
As usual, Pettit shared details of the equipment and camera settings that he used to grab the shots. In this case, he used a full-frame Nikon Z9 body with a 200mm lens set at f/2 and a speed of 1/320 sec, while the ISO was set at 25600. Pettit added that he processed the images in Photoshop before sharing them.
While Pettit is also working on science research aboard the ISS along with all of the other astronauts there, he also loves to head to the station’s seven-window Cupola module to capture extraordinary views of Earth using the Nikon Z9. Just recently, he shared a striking shot of London at night, and, in another remarkable image, he managed to capture the Polaris Dawn Crew Dragon capsule as it entered Earth’s atmosphere at high speed at the end of a historic five-day mission.
Pettit will be in orbit until March 2025 — ample time to create more works of art from space.
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.