Amazing View from Above
View of the Red Sea from the International Space Station
Media Credit: NASA
From 250 miles above, International Space Station crew members have a unique view of our beautiful planet. Last week, NASANational Aeronautics and Space Administration Astronaut Ricky Arnold took this stunning photo of the Red Sea from the ISSInternational Space Station. Arnold posted the photo, saying, “Humankind’s most advanced technology serves as the foreground for a timeless land.”
The ISS not only provides amazing views from its vantage point in low Earth orbit(Abbreviation: LEO) The orbit around the Earth that extends up to an altitude of 2,000 km (1,200 miles) from Earth’s surface. The International Space Station’s orbit is in LEO, at an altitude of approximately 250 miles. but also serves as a powerful Earth observation platform. Learn about some of the ways the ISS National Lab is being used for valuable Earth observation:
- The Multiple User System for Earth Sensing (MUSES) platform
- The Hyperspectral Imager for the Coastal Ocean (HICO) Image Processing System
- Project Meteor
- Visidyne, Inc.’s Cyclone Intensity Measurements from the ISS (CyMISS) project
- Windows on Earth (curated collections of images that appeal to anyone, with a Mystery Images activity for middle through high school)
- Sally Ride EarthKAM (middle school students select the photography targets, and the image galleries are available to the public)