Astonished SpaceX capsule astronaut shoots home planet video

Check it out.

NASA astronaut Victor Glover exploded in Earth orbit aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft last week. Shortly after, Glover and three other astronauts docked safely with the International Space Station.

Glover, the first black astronaut expected for an extended six-month stay on the space station, recently tweeted his inaugural video of the craft that carried him into orbit, some 250 miles above Earth.

The photo shows a point of view of the Earth in the black void of space. We can see the blue trace of the planet’s thin atmosphere and a swirling weather system over the ocean. Space station drone swirls in the background. Obviously, the scene is even more poignant in person.

“Look at Earth through the Dragon Resilience window,” Glover wrote. “The scale of the details and the sensory inputs made it a breathtaking prospect!”

Glover’s mission, called SpaceX Crew-1, is the Crew Dragon spacecraft’s first “operational” flight, which means the first time the SpaceX capsule has been used on an active mission, as opposed to a test. Previously, SpaceX made history in May when the space exploration company became the first commercial company to send astronauts to Earth orbit.

Now in space, Glover can regularly observe our humble blue planet, a perspective that often changes the way astronauts view the world and the delicate life within it. This is called the “big picture effect”.

Edgar Mitchell, a NASA astronaut who walked on the moon, said, “You want to grab a politician by the skin of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch. ‘”