Daily Telescope: I spy, with my little eye, the ISS

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Enlarge / The International Space Station as seen from 69 km away.

HEO on X

Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light, a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’re going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.

Good morning. It’s May 16, and today’s image comes from an on-demand satellite imagery company named HEO. Only this image is not of the Earth, but rather the International Space Station.

According to the company, which is headquartered in Australia, one of its cameras imaged the space station at a distance of 69.06 km away, over the Indian Ocean. HEO flies its sensors as hosted payloads on satellites in Earth orbit. However, HEO’s focus is not on Earth; it’s on other spacecraft in low-Earth orbit to assess their status and identify anomalous behavior.

As for the space station, it remains in good health after a quarter of a century of operations. NASA is currently working with its international partners to extend the station’s operations through 2030. After that, the space agency would like to retire the vehicle and transition to commercially operated space stations.

Source: HEO on X.

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