A street view from far above the clouds
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 extra-terrestrial, 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 vast majority of Street View’s photography is shot by a vehicle, whose movement is available to fans online. Google’s foray into space is the first time Street View imagery has been captured beyond the surface of planet Earth.
In a blog post about his experience, Pesquet wrote that ‘‘it was difficult to find the words or take a picture that accurately describes the feeling of being in space’’.
The virtual tour allows users to peek into areas where the ISS astronauts eat, exercise, work and even bathe.
Pesquet’s imagery reveal an environment that may look a bit cramped and chaotic -- if not altogether dizzying -- to humans anchored on Earth, but some of the scenes are downright mesmerising.
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 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.
The station houses laboratories from the United States, Russia, Japan and Europe.
‘‘We can collect data on the Earth’s oceans, atmosphere and land surface,’’ Pesquet wrote. ‘‘We can conduct experiments and studies that we wouldn’t be able to do from Earth, like monitoring how the human body reacts to microgravity, solving mysteries of the immune system, studying cyclones in order to alert populations and governments when a storm is approaching, or monitoring marine litter -- the rapidly increasing amount waste found in our oceans.’’