2024-07-30 09:49:20
But like this week’s astronaut revealed in a Reddit postthe same photo “cannot be repeated” – and not because global warming has irreversibly changed our planet or because photographic technology no longer exists.
Indeed, this is because the ISS then orbited the Earth with its solar arrays permanently pointed at the Sun – as they could not change their angle at that time.
“Essentially, the station itself was a tracking mechanism, so the camera attached to the space station captured the stars as point objects,” Pettitas explains.
However, in 2006 the station changed its position so that one side remained permanently facing Earth. Taking the same photo at the same angle would now show “arc paths” instead of dots.
D. Pettitas worked in the sixth crew of the ISS, which in 2002 was sent to the ISS at the end. During the six-month stay, the astronaut took thousands of pictures of the stars and shared them with the whole world on the Internet.
As of this year, he is the oldest still active NASA astronaut and is expected to make his third visit to the station in September, along with two Russian cosmonauts, in a Soyuz capsule. Once there, he plans to replicate the photo he recently shared using a fancy device.
Mr. Pettit revealed that he will be carrying “a launchable tracker that will compensate for the current motions of the space station and allow us to take long exposures again.”
“Using the current generation of digital cameras, I hope to continue taking these astrophotographic pictures of the stars,” he added.
Designed by Futurism.
2024-07-30 09:49:20