What we are about to see is a fast-motion video (or timelapse , in English) from the window of the SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft. The video, recorded by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Soichi Noguchi , shows a field of black and blue stars moving through the frame.
“I didn’t think the views could improve, so my crewmate [Soichi Noguchi] took this nighttime Resilience timelapse and I was blown away,” said NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins who was also with Noguchi at the time. They are both on board now on the International Space Station.
The astronauts were the first to be flown to the ISS by a commercial operator and the first from US soil since the Space Shuttle’s last flight in 2011. Noguchi, who took the sensational video, has traveled to the ISS three times.
The first was on the space shuttle, which was retired in 2011, then flew to the station in a Soyuz spacecraft operated by Roscosmos, and finally on this journey by becoming the first Japanese astronaut to fly in a commercial spacecraft.
The video, 15 seconds of a view of planet Earth that only a select few will be able to see , was shared on networks by NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins. It’s unclear whether the time lapse was taken from the space-facing IDA-3 port or the forward-facing IDA-2 port, Resilience’s previous parking spot.
Since arriving at the station on November 15 aboard a Crew Dragon capsule, SpaceX’s second manned mission involving the spacecraft, the Japanese Noguchi has posted numerous spectacular views of planet Earth on his Twitter account.
