Astronauts living aboard the International Space Station are Earth’s human eyes in sky. The photos they snap from our orbiting laboratory do much more than create beautiful art. They have also helped power numerous scientific studies and support disaster response efforts.
Crew Earth Observation images are currently supporting a number of urban night lighting studies, glacier and volcano monitoring, and studies of atmospheric processes such as the frequency of lightning flashes. The images also are used in ecological studies, including a collaborative project called Aviation Migration Aerial Surface Space (AMASS), which tracks bird migration routes and the effects of changes occurring along those routes. Crew Earth Observations have been ongoing since 1961 and more than 1,500,000 images have been taken during space station operations.
Want to take a look at more of the images? Pictures taken by the crew are free to the public! You can access the database at any time at Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.