Expedition 65 began in April of this year aboard the International Space Station, currently home to seven crew members. The ISS orbits the Earth at about 17,150 miles per hour, making a trip around the world about every 90 minutes. Today, the astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Thomas Pesquet spent hours outside the ISS, working on newly arrived solar arrays. In the past few months, crew members of Expedition 65 have also taken some amazing photographs of our lovely planet, and I wanted to share some of these unique views below.
The Beauty of Earth From Orbit
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The early-morning hues of an orbital sunrise are seen from the International Space Station as it soars 264 miles above the China-Russia border, near the the Sea of Japan, on April 28, 2021. #
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This photograph taken on May 26, 2021, looks down on Lake Nasser, the reservoir in southern Egypt that was formed by the Aswan High Dam when it was built across the Nile River. #
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In this view from a window aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour, a pair of the ISS's main solar arrays drape across the Earth's horizon as the orbital lab soars 271 miles above the south Atlantic between Argentina and South Africa on May 20, 2021. #
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This nighttime photograph, taken on May 20, 2021, from the ISS as it orbited 263 miles above Turkey, shows moonlight reflecting on the Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of Suez. The city lights of Cairo and along the Nile Delta and the eastern Mediterranean coast also figure prominently. #
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The SpaceX Cargo Dragon resupply ship approaches the ISS carrying more than 7,300 pounds of new science, supplies, and solar arrays to replenish the Expedition 65 crew on June 5, 2021. The Cargo Dragon's nose cone is open, revealing its hatch and forward-docking cone. #
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A view of reentry at night. The SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience is pictured from the ISS as it reenters Earth's atmosphere on May 2, 2021. Resilience, with its protective heat shield, reached the atmosphere at more than 17,000 miles per hour, experiencing friction and extreme heat that created a visible plasma trail streaming behind it. The astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker, and Soichi Noguchi would safely parachute to a splashdown inside Resilience a few minutes later in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Panama City, Florida. #
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An aurora is seen streaming above the Earth from a window aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience on April 19, 2021. The ISS was orbiting 271 miles above the Indian Ocean between Australia and Antarctica. #
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Russia's ISS Progress 75 cargo craft is pictured from the International Space Station on April 27, 2021, after it undocked from the Zvezda service module's aft port, where it had stayed for just longer than a year. The trash-filled 75P reentered Earth's atmosphere above the South Pacific for a fiery but safe demise a day later. #
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The Expedition 65 flight engineer and Roscosmos cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov is pictured on June 2, 2021, during a seven-hour spacewalk to ready the Pirs docking compartment ahead of its upcoming departure. #
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An Expedition 65 Earth observation composite of the Bahamas, photographed by the European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet on May 2, 2021. This composite photograph of Cuba, the Bahamas, and southern Florida was captured as the ISS orbited 263 miles above the Caribbean. #
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