Thomas Pesquet

An ISS astronaut has captured an image of Earth showing only water. European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet posted the image on Twitter described the scene as “our blue marble,” a nod to the famous image of the Earth taken by the Apollo 17 crew in 1972. Pesquet added: “Sometimes, there’s just no land in sight, even from our 400-km [250-mile] crow’s nest. I think of all the sailors and explorers who traveled the world on solitary expeditions.”

As the French astronaut suggests, most images taken from ISS consist of a bit of land. But Thomas, impressive picture is a reminder that Earth comprises mainly ocean, with water covering about 70% of its surface.  Thomas on, his arrival on ISS in April 2021, we’re shown some of his best images of Earth and this is his 2nd visit to ISS. 

Latest photo of Earth taken by Thomas Pesequet –

Thomas had to question where he was in the solar system when he looked out of the window of the ISS this month and clicked a photo of Earth looking a lot like Mars. He wrote, “No cloud in sight and the red and ochre colors stretching to the horizon. This is how I imagine the Perseverance rover would have seen Mars on its approach to landing.”

ESA highlighted the image last week after Thomas shared the photo on social media. He shared that he had to double-take when he saw the view, not Mars but Earth.

Astronaut interest in taking Earth images – 

ISS keeps changing crews and most missions last for six months. Many of the crew members have a keen interest in taking images. Among the last ISS crew, Soichi Noguchi, a Japanese astronaut has shown himself as a keen earth observer and he keeps sharing pictures of Earth on regular basis. For the best views, ISS astronauts usually head to the Cupola, a seven-window module that was attached to the ISS in 2010. A wide range of cameras and lenses are there to choose from for Pesquet and other crew members. This includes top models made by Sony and Nikon.