A street view from far above Earth’s surface
HOUSTON People use Google Street View to check out a new apartment, map traffic before they hit the road and search for haunting slices of the everyday world. Now the terrestrial mapping system has gone extraterrestrial, allowing users to peer inside the International Space Station (ISS) from their computer 400 kilometres below with 360-degree, panoramic views.
The Street View imagery was captured by Thomas Pesquet, an astronaut with the European Space Agency, who spent six months aboard the ISS before returning to Earth in June.
The virtual tour allows users to peek into areas where the ISS astronauts eat, exercise, work and even bathe.
The images were captured using DSLR cameras and then ‘‘stitched together’’ back on Earth to create panoramic views.
Pesquet noted that the ISS was a ‘‘busy place’’, with six crew members working and researching 12 hours a day.
‘‘There are a lot of obstacles up GOOGLE MAPS there, and we had limited time to capture the imagery, so we had to be confident that our approach would work. Oh, and there’s that whole zero gravity thing.’’
Floating through the ISS online, users will notice clickable dots with detailed descriptions of an area and its objects to help viewers understand what exactly they are looking at. Pesquet said this was the first time such ‘‘helpful little notes’’ had been added to Street View imagery.
The ISS orbits Earth at more than 28,000kmh and is home for astronauts from countries around the world. It is made up of modules that were constructed beginning in 1998.
Nasa compares the inside of the station to the inside of a house, noting that the structure – which covers an area the side of a football field – has five bedrooms, two bathrooms, a gymnasium and a big bay window. It houses laboratories from the United States, Russia, Japan and Europe. Washington Post