Last updated February 9, 2018 at 10:41 am
The International Space Station cheekily photobombs the moon.
The International Space Station is seen as it crosses in front of the moon. Click image for full-size. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
This incredible photograph caught the International Space Station as it crosses between Earth and the Moon at roughly five miles per second. It was captured on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2018, from Virginia, United States.
Onboard the ISS is a crew of six – NASA astronauts Joe Acaba, Mark Vande Hei, and Scott Tingle; Russian Cosmonauts Alexander Misurkin and Anton Shkaplerov, and Japanese astronaut Norishige Kanai.
From tip to tip, the ISS stretches around 109 metres – larger than a soccer field, making it the largest man-made object in low-Earth orbit.
Orbiting at an altitude of between 330 and 430km, it completes 15.54 orbits per day.
A collaboration between 5 main space agencies – the USA’s NASA, Russia’s RosCosmos, Europe’s ESA, Canada’s CSA and JAXA of Japan, it is the longest continually inhabited space station in history. First occupied in 2000, it has been visited and occupied by astronauts and space tourists from 18 countries. Over that time it has provided an invaluable platform for a range of scientific research unable to be carried out on Earth.
