After offering some fresh perspectives of the inside of the International Space Station (ISS), private astronaut Marcus Wandt pointed his camera the other way and captured some stunning images of Earth.
“Isn’t she pretty?” Wandt wrote on Monday in a social media post that included the pictures.
Isn't she pretty?#Earth #NoFilter #Muninn pic.twitter.com/thVHkniUHC
— Marcus Wandt (@astro_marcus) February 4, 2024
When it comes to aerial photography, you really can’t beat the incredible vantage point offered by the space station some 250 miles above Earth. Some astronauts are more interested than others when it comes to capturing imagery of our beautiful planet. French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, for example, made a name for himself as a particularly skilled Earth photographer and even released a book featuring his best images. But capturing the amazing photos actually takes a great deal of research and planning, according to Pesquet.
In another post shared on Monday, Wandt included images that showed Earth and large parts of the space station, including its solar arrays and various modules that make up the large orbital facility.
“This is how I see the International Space Station from the inside,” Wandt wrote. “My working station is an incredible piece of spacecraft engineering. On it I travel about 400 km above your heads at 28,000 km per hour, circling Earth approximately 16 times every day.”
He added: “The Space Station is the largest object ever built in orbit, a place that has brought humankind together to live and work in space continuously for more than two decades.”
This is how I see the International @Space_Station from the inside. My working station is an incredible piece of spacecraft engineering.
On it I travel about 400 km above your heads at 28 000 km per hour, circling Earth approximately 16 times every day.
The Space Station is… pic.twitter.com/So9QMKtztI
— Marcus Wandt (@astro_marcus) February 5, 2024
Wandt arrived at the space station with three other crewmembers on January 20 for a two-week stay that’s seen him conducting science research, taking part in outreach events, and, yes, taking impressive Earth images. His mission, Axiom-3, has been organized by Texas-based Axiom Space and is the third private astronaut mission to the ISS to be overseen by NASA.
Wandt and his three fellow travelers are set to undock from the space station at 9:05 a.m. ET on Tuesday, February 6. They’ll travel home aboard the same vehicle that they arrived in, a SpaceX Crew Dragon.
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.