Sunrise to Sunset aboard the Space Station

The International Space Station orbits 354 kilometers (220 miles) above the Earth, completing one trip around the globe every 92 minutes. Cruising along at 27700 km (17200 miles) per hour, the astronauts experience 15 or 16 sunrises and -sets every day. Since the launch of the Zarya Control Module on November 20, 1998, the station has orbited the Earth over 66500 times (as of June 27, 2010). The station’s orbit is inclined to the equator by 51.65°, meaning at its most northerly, it is at the latitude of London, England, and at it most southerly it is over the latitude of the Falkland Islands. This sequence of time-lapse photographs illustrates roughly half an orbit, from sunrise over Northern Europe (top photograph) to sunset southeast of Australia, on April 28, 2010. The view is to the north of the station's ground track. In the upper-left, is the tail of the Space Shuttle Discovery, which docked with the Space Station during the STS-131 mission. The animation begins with a view of snow-covered Norway (image top) and the Jutland Peninsula (image center). Low clouds cover Central Europe (image bottom). The animation continues as the Station flies by Ukraine, eastern Russia, the Volga River, and then the Russian Steppes. South and east of the steppes, a dust storm comes into view over the Taklimakan Desert, followed shortly by the lake-studded Tibetan Plateau and the glaciers of the Himalayan Mountains (center photograph). Smoke-shrouded lowlands hug the southern margin of ...

Channel: YouTube Video Length: 1m 17s Date Found: Tue, Jun 29 2010 3:14 AM Category: Technology Date Produced: Mon, Jun 28 2010 12:20 PM View Count: 0