This composite image made from five frames shows the International Space Station, with a crew of nine onboard, in silhouette as it transits the sun at roughly 5 miles per second, Sunday, Sept. 6, 2015, Shenandoah National Park, Front Royal, VA. (Photo : NASA/Bill Ingalls)
This incredible glimpse of the International Space Station was captured from the Shenandoah National Park in Front Royal, Virginia last September 6, Sunday as the orbiting laboratory zipped by the sun at a speed of five miles for every second.
The space station is located some 250 miles above Earth and is now carrying nine crew members. NASA astronaut Scott Kelly began his command at the ISS last Saturday as Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, is already bound to return back to Earth on Friday, September 13, who is also considered to be the world's most experienced space explorer, clocking in 879 days in orbit during his career.
Kelly and fellow cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are now halfway through their one year long mission in orbit, where Kelly also revealed that this mission would have been accomplished easier if this time was spent on a journey to Mars, he said on a press conference on Tuesday.
Kelly adds that, he's not saying that he's not psyched for the rest of the mission, however, in some ways at being halfway through this, there is a lot of what they are doing right now that is similar to what is already done. He also says that he's excited for the astronauts who will journey to Mars someday.
He noted that, the key to manage long duration flights like the upcoming Mars mission is to pace yourself, where he believes that this cannot be done simply like a six month mission.
Aboard the orbiting lab for the mission are crew members namely NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren, European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen, Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Sergey Volkov, Kazakhstan cosmonaut Aidyn Aimbetov and JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui.
Yui told media, it is very lively up in the space station where he enjoys working with a large group, speaking through a translator. On the other hand, Mogensen and Aimbetov are part of a short duration space taxi crew where they will also hitch the ride back home with Padalka on Friday, on a Russian Soyuz capsule.
