A new time-lapse footage permits us here on Earth to see what our planet looks like from the ISS (International Space Station) — and the sights are stunning.
Alexander Gerst, European Space Agency astronaut came back from the ISS back in Nov after serving as a flight engineer for a 6 month voyage. However, engineer work wasn’t all he was doing on board the spaceship: he also set up cams to catch 12,500 pictures out the window of the ISS, and transformed them into a time-lapse footage that delineates everything from vicious storms to splendid auroras, as indicated by International Business Times.
Gerst said his time on board the ISS made him acknowledge exactly how little the planet is in the universe, and how delicate of a vessel it is for humankind, and that “we have to comprehend the universe we live into secure our home,” he said in an announcement.
Gerst, who hails from Germany, was a part of the Blue Dot mission a month ago, serving beside Russian cosmonaut Maxim Suarev and American astronaut Reid Wiseman. They were observed to perceive how they would rearrange to gravity after spending a lot of time in space.
All of them used Twitter to document their journey, posting pictures and videos to share with their fans.
They were charged with a series of missions and trials, including investigating seedling development in zero gravity, perception of meteors as they enter the environment, and investigations of bone and muscle physiology, to name some.
They came back to Earth at the start of November, slipping through the mists and arriving in Kazakhstan after the 165-day mission. Cold climate made recovery troublesome right off the bat, yet the team arrived securely in their targeted area only 3.5 hours after undocking from the ISS.
Amid their mission, the ISS made 2,640 orbits, or 70 million miles, permitting Gerst to get all the pictures he required to develop stunning time-lapse. They had launched on 28th May from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in southwest Kazakhstan, as per a CBS News report.
Since the Soyuz module they returned in had tipped onto its side, the recovery groups needed to spend a half hour separating the three men from the spaceship. They all come out well and in great spirits, chatting with specialists and experts.
The ISS is a tenable artificial satellite that sits in low-Earth orbit (LEO), a modular spaceship whose first segment was sent into space in 1998. It is currently the biggest artificial body in orbit and can frequently be seen with the stripped eye by a spectator on Earth. It is a joint project between the United States and Russia. It is utilized to lead tests in an extensive variety of fields, including biology, physical, and meteorology.
The ISS has been in incessant operation for more than 14 years since Expedition 1 touched base in November 2000. It holds the record for longest incessant human existence in space, demolishing the past record of about 10 years by the Russian space station Mir, which left service in 1996.
The ISS is 239 feet long, 356 feet wide and 66 feet tall. It weighs about 500 tons.
