Today’s Image of the Day from NASA Earth Observatory shows an incredible sunrise from the International Space Station (ISS) when it was positioned high above Massachusetts.
The astronaut who took the photograph with a Nikon D4 digital camera caught a rare break in the clouds as the Sun’s reflection moved across the Canadian provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador. According to NASA, clouds are so common in this region that not many pictures are captured with such clarity from the ISS.
This image is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit at Johnson Space Center.The International Space Station (ISS) is a space station (habitable artificial satellite) in low Earth orbit. The ISS programme is a joint project between five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe), and CSA (Canada).The ownership and use of the space station is established by intergovernmental treaties and agreements.]
The ISS serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which crew members conduct experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology, and other fields. The station is suited for the testing of spacecraft systems and equipment required for missions to the Moon and Mars. The ISS maintains an orbit with an average altitude of 400 kilometres (250 mi) by means of reboost manoeuvres using the engines of the Zvezda module or visiting spacecraft. It circles the Earth in roughly 92 minutes and completes 15.5 orbits per day
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By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer
Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory