It is the third brightest object in the sky and easy to spot if you know when to look up. The spacecraft houses science labs from the United States, Japan, Russia and. Watch the International Space Station pass overhead from several thousand worldwide locations. Several countries worked together to design, build and staff the ISS. Pesquet then rotated himself around the point.įor four months, from February until May, Pesquet gradually collected photos which were then sent back to Earth and stitched together to form a 360 view. Since November 2000, the International Space Station has been home to astronauts from around the world, studying what happens to people when they live and work in space. Energy from the Sun provides electricity to. Working with a replica of the space station at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, the company developed a solution: affix two bungee cords to the walls of a module, thus creating a fixed point for the camera. Inside the ISS, there are science labs, control stations, and living quarters, connected to each other by nodes. Google had to design an entirely new gravity-free method of collecting images. “Without gravity, it’s basically impossible to have a single point that you’re rotating around.”
“We usually use tripod to ground the imagery at a single point and rotate the camera around that point,” said Yick. In space, a tripod would just start floating.
#INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION INSIDE FULL#
Individuals mapping for Google usually put a camera on a tripod, which is then rotated to get a full 360 degree view. Then there was the issue of gravity - or the lack thereof. The astronaut, Thomas Pesquet, used equipment already on board the ISS to map the entire station for Google. With the help of NASA and an educational organization called CASIS, Google was assigned a French astronaut from the European Space Agency. More: Udderly amazing: Google Street View blurs bashful bovine More: Google Street View dives under the sea More: Google Street View cameras top Mont Blanc for 360-degree views But since the ISS is orbiting the planet, that wasn’t possible. Typically, someone with a camera will physically go to a location Google wants to map.
#INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION INSIDE UPDATE#
We are planning on releasing the new ISS experience on November 24th, stay tuned This update will be available on the Samsung Gear VR and the Oculus Rift. We will also add details regarding some major elements of the Station. Mapping in a zero-gravity environment presented a unique set of challenges for Google. The new ISS experience will give you the ability to explore in details each modules of the ISS (from Zvezda to Columbus).