A French astronaut shared a picture on Twitter that shows the speed at which the International Space Station is orbiting the Earth, contrary to what many believe.
In his limited spare time, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency (ESA) has captured a stunning 30-second time-lapse shot of our planet, in which city lights appear blurry with tiny star trails in the background. has been
Pesquet, who is also a fine photographer, held the shutter open for 30 seconds. This exposure resulted in a nighttime image of Earth showing the amount of fast motion, with bright lines representing the path of city lights. He told that during that time the International Space Station had traveled 235 km.
The astronaut also explained that it is difficult to get used to the idea that the International Space Station is moving at 28,000 kilometers per hour (about 7.6 kilometers per second), and even more so, to reflect that number in the snapshot. for. “We’re so high we’re not moving that fast,” he wrote.
The International Space Station is located at a distance of 400 kilometers from the Earth’s surface and completes one orbit every 90 minutes. That is, it rotates about 16 times in 24 hours. However, despite its incredible speed, the astronauts who live and work there do not see anything unusual in this regard.
“A photo of some experiments with the imaging technology I’ve been experimenting with,” Pesquet said in a tweet, assuring viewers that there will be “more to come.”
He added that from the space station’s altitude of about 400 kilometers, the astronauts “are at such an altitude that we don’t feel the movement at that speed.”
Pesquet has a long tradition of astronauts taking pictures of Earth. However, according to RT, Earth observation isn’t just for fun.
NASA uses the perspective of astronauts to launch from the space station to make valuable observations of hurricanes, volcanoes, global warming and other events, complementing a fleet of weather satellites that can do so 24/7 from high orbits. .
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