The International Space Station (ISS) has been caught looking a bit out of place in a new photo taken by an in-orbit imaging satellite.
This week, Australia-based HEO Robotics Released A picture of the International Space Station as we have never seen it before. The mysterious black-and-white image was captured by one of the company’s non-terrestrial imaging satellites, just 43 miles (69 kilometers) from the 356-foot (109-meter) space station.
“Non-terrestrial imaging provides the best view of satellites in space,” HEO Robotics wrote on X’s website. HEO Robotics provides satellite images of objects in orbit, as well as satellite inspection services to government and commercial operators. The company photographed more than a hundred objects after they reached their orbital destinations and later used its software to identify the objects.
The company has a fleet of 30 sensors in low Earth orbit, which it uses to take grainy images of satellites and spacecraft orbiting them.
Earlier in February, HEO Robotics captured a photo of picture View of the European Space Agency’s Earth observation satellite ERS-2 as it plummets to a fiery death through Earth’s atmosphere. It also gave us the company’s curious satellites First look at SpaceX’s Starlink V2 satellite in orbit.
But perhaps no other object in low Earth orbit is as famous as the International Space Station, which is the size of an American football field and has a mass of about 1 million pounds, according to NASA. The space station has been in orbit for more than 20 years, orbiting our planet at a distance of 250 miles (460 kilometers).
We’re used to seeing NASA photos of the International Space Station gliding gracefully through its orbit, looking like a mechanical phoenix. A recent satellite image of the space station is a good reminder that it’s just a weird pile of metal floating around in space, doing its best.
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