Common Themes

For this week’s Perspective, I chose something that is indeed from a different perspective… literally! The above image was taken from the International Space Station during STS-123:

STS123-E-008018 (21 March 2008) — While docked and onboard the International Space Station, a STS-123 Endeavour crewmember captured the glowing green beauty of the Aurora Borealis. Looking northward across the Gulf of Alaska, over a low pressure area (cloud vortex), the aurora brightens the night sky.

(Download the large version here.)

An amusing interesting little post on Slashdot earlier this week:

“Michael Benson is proposing that NASA send the ISS to the moon instead of leaving it low earth orbit. (While we’re at it, we should re-brand it as the ‘International Space Ship.’) He points out that it’s already designed to be moved periodically to higher orbits so instead of just boosting it a few miles, strap on some ion engines and put it in orbit around the moon instead of the earth. That would provide an initial base for the astronauts going to the moon and give the ISS a purpose other than performing yet more studies on the effect of micro gravity on humans. Benson concludes: ‘Let’s begin the process of turning the ISS from an Earth-orbiting caterpillar into an interplanetary butterfly.’”

My favorite part? Among the tags listed on the article: “goodluckwiththat”.

Edit: If anyone’s interested, the orange moon icon used as this site’s favicon, as well as in the above graphic, is available here: