Space station crew captures image of moon’s shadow during solar eclipse

Whereas tens of millions of individuals seemed skyward at Monday’s whole photo voltaic eclipse on Monday, a handful of earthlings took in a a lot totally different view of the uncommon phenomenon — from the Worldwide Area Station.

Because the station orbited above southeastern Canada, flight engineers Matthews Dominick and Jeanette Epps managed to {photograph} and videotape the moon’s shadow on Earth about 260 miles beneath them, NASA mentioned on Monday.

The Expedition 71 crew had the possibility to view the moon’s shadow on Earth, or umbra, after spending the day finishing cargo transfers, spacesuit upkeep and microgravity analysis, NASA mentioned. The home windows on the outpost’s cupola — referred to as its “window to the world” — had been open, permitting the astronauts to seize the cool photographs.

The Worldwide Area Station skilled about 90% totality throughout its flyover, and NASA posted a video of the occasion on social media:

Greater than 31 million folks stay within the path of totality, the realm the place the moon totally blocked out the solar, in response to NASA. The trail ranged between 108 and 122 miles extensive. An extra 150 million folks stay inside 200 miles of the trail of totality.

Earlier than hovering into the moon’s shadow through the eclipse, the house station crew carried out quite a lot of different duties on Monday — together with orbital plumbing, fixing a pair of science freezers and air flow upkeep.

The beautiful picture of the moon’s shadow got here simply days after NASA launched photographs that its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured of Korea Aerospace Analysis Institute’s Danuri lunar orbiter throughout a flyby in March.

The 2 spacecraft, touring in almost parallel orbits, zipped previous one another in reverse instructions, and the LRO operations workforce “wanted beautiful timing in pointing LROC to the correct place on the proper time to catch a glimpse of Danuri.”

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been circling the moon for 15 years, captured a number of photographs — which resemble a cosmic surfboard zooming by way of house — throughout three orbits whereas it was shut sufficient to Danuri to seize snapshots.