Since late last year, nine different astronauts from four nations have rotated through Expeditions 57, 58, and 59 aboard the International Space Station, which is still orbiting 250 miles above Earth more than 20 years since its first component was launched. These recent expeditions carried out observations and experiments related to cancer research, climate change, human endurance in microgravity, free-flying robotic exploration technologies, and much more. And of course, in their free time, the astronauts took hundreds of incredible photographs of our home planet from their unique vantage point.
Views From Above: The Past Eight Months in Orbit
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Lights of the upper-midwestern United States at night viewed from the International Space Station on May 10, 2019. The brightest spot (at left) is the Minneapolis–St. Paul area, with Chicago visible in the upper middle. #
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The astronaut David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency takes pictures of Earth below from inside the International Space Station's "window to the world," a seven-windowed cupola, on January 15, 2019. #
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The uncrewed SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft is seen silhouetted against Earth's horizon during Demo-1, the first flight of NASA's Commercial Crew Program to the International Space Station, on March 4, 2019. The vehicle ultimately docked to the station's Harmony module after completing several successful demonstrations during approach. #
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The Russian spacewalker Oleg Kononenko works outside the ISS to inspect the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft on December 11, 2018. During the spacewalk, he and his fellow spacewalker Sergey Prokopyev examined the external hull of the Soyuz crew ship docked to the Rassvet module. The area corresponded with the location of a small hole inside the Soyuz habitation module that was found in August and caused a decrease in the space station’s pressure. The hole was fixed internally with a sealant within hours of its detection. #
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(From left): The Expedition 59 flight engineers Anne McClain, David Saint-Jacques, and Christina Koch gather inside the U.S. Destiny laboratory aboard the ISS on April 29, 2019. #
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An astronaut aboard the ISS shot this photograph while orbiting at an altitude of more than 250 miles (400 kilometers) over Australia on October 7, 2018. In this view, stars appear more numerous in the image's center, where the plane of our disk-shaped Milky Way galaxy extends into space. The orange color enveloping Earth is known as airglow—diffuse bands of light that stretch 50 to 400 miles into our atmosphere. The phenomenon typically occurs when molecules (mostly nitrogen and oxygen) are energized by ultraviolet radiation from sunlight. To release that energy, atoms in the lower atmosphere bump into one another and lose energy in the collision. But the upper atmosphere is thinner, so atoms are less likely to collide. Instead, they release their energy by emitting photons. The result is colorful airglow. #
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Looking south across the American Southwest from San Francisco Bay (lower right to the Great Salt Lake (far left) to Arizona and northern Mexico (top, viewed on May 1, 2019 #
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As viewed from orbit on December 3, 2018, the Soyuz MS-11 rocket launch lifts three crew members of Expedition 58 into space from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to meet the ISS. #
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