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Earthgazing, NASA-style
Earth scientists love it when astronauts gaze through the space station's extraordinary Destiny Lab window.
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May 29, 2002
Astronaut Dan Bursch glanced at a map, checked his watch, and literally flew to the window. He didn't want to miss what would soon pass by: Mt. Everest. The highest place on Earth.
The sun was just rising over Tibet when he spotted the Himalayas 350 km below his spacecraft. "The low sun angle gave tremendous relief to the mountains," he recalled. "Mt. Everest seemed to jump out at me! It was just one of those sights that will be forever burned into my brain." He captured the scene using a digital camera and emailed it to Earth -- a breathtaking postcard from the International Space Station (ISS).
Astronaut Dan Bursch, a member of the Expedition 4 crew on the International Space Station, snapped this picture of Mt. Everest in late March 2002. [more]
The space station is a good place for Earthgazing. "Right now there are sixteen windows on the ISS, nine of them usually look down on the earth," says Lockheed Martin Earth scientist Julie Robinson. The view is amazing through all of them, yet one window -- the one Dan chose for his photo of Mt Everest -- is special: the Destiny Lab window.
It's the largest and clearest viewing port on the station. "Astronauts Tom Jones and Marsha Ivins said it was so clear on orbit they felt they could fall through it when they were looking at Earth," says Karen Scott of The Aerospace Corporation. "It was like it wasn't there."
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Cheers,
Dan
Earthgazing, NASA-style . . .