A French astronaut shared on Twitter a photo showing the speed with which the International Space Station is moving as it orbits the Earth, contrary to what many believe.
In his limited free time, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency (ESA) has captured an astonishing 30-second time-lapse shot of our planet, showing blurred city lights with tiny star trails in the background. .
Pesquet, who is also a great photographer, held the shutter open for 30 seconds. This exposure resulted in a night image of the Earth showing the amount of rapid movement, with the glowing lines representing the path of city lights. He explained that during that period, the International Space Station traveled 235 kilometers.
The astronaut also explained that it is difficult to get used to the idea that the International Space Station is moving at a speed of 28,000 kilometers per hour (about 7.6 kilometers per second), and more than that, to reflect that figure in a snapshot. . “We are so high that we don’t move that fast,” he wrote.
The International Space Station is located 400 kilometers from the surface of the Earth and completes an orbit around it every 90 minutes. This means that it rotates about 16 times in 24 hours. However, despite its incredible speed, the astronauts who inhabit it do not see anything unusual about it while living and working there.
“A snapshot of some of the imaging technology experiments I’ve been experimenting with,” Pesquet said in a tweet, assuring viewers that “there would be more to come.”
He noted that from the space station’s altitude of about 400 kilometers, the astronauts are “at a sufficient altitude so that we do not feel movement at that speed.”
Pesquet has a long tradition of astronauts taking pictures of Earth. However, Earth observation isn’t just for fun, according to rt.
NASA uses the perspective of astronauts to make valuable observations of launches, hurricanes, volcanoes, global warming and other phenomena from the space station, complementing the fleet of meteorological satellites that can do it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from higher orbits.
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