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Cloud patterns over the Canary Islands; astronaut photography taken from the International Space Station on June 28, 2020. The patterns may represent micro weather phenomena on the ocean surface. Large areas of the earth are often obscured by cloud cover. To help astronauts recognize cloud patterns when looking out of the cupola or other windows, we obtain images daily from the University of Wisconsin, Space Science and Engineering Center, Satellite Data Services (UW SSEC SDS), Madison WI. These images are accurately projected over our Google Globe of the Earth for the benefit of the astronauts. About a week earlier, plumes of dust generated over the Western Sahara traveled across the Atlantic. These are slightly detectable as haze towards the center of this photograph, most of the plume having already reached the shores of the US.

Night lights, Cape Town, South Africa. Photograph taken by an astronaut on the International Space Station on July 1, 2020. Google Maps provided as reference. The ISS orbits Earth once every 90 minutes or 16 times every day. Astronauts, therefore, experience 16 sunsets and 16 sunrises every 24 hours. Our major task is to convey requests for photography from ground control in Houston to the astronauts every day. For photography during an Earth night, our application allows the astronaut to switch to night mode to see Google Earth showing target markers for each requested photograph overlaid on night lights taken during previous missions, so they can recognize what they are seeing out of the selected window.

The first image of the Great Salt Lake near Ogden, Utah was taken from the ISS on July 6, 2020. The dramatic contrast in lake colors to the north and south of the straight line baffled me until I researched further. The difference in color: reddish pink to the north and greenish blue to the south are probably due to different types of algae living off salts (pink areas are saltier) in the two sections. The straight line is a railway causeway that runs from Promontory Point to... the east, dividing the lake water and resulting in differences in chemical composition probably due to varying temperature and evaporation rates. The second image is from Google Maps provided as a reference. The third photograph was taken by Justin McFarland, published by Fox 13 News on September 1, 2018. Notice the stark difference in color between the photograph taken from space and the one taken at ground level. Colors appear different in space; We had to transform colors on our map of the entire earth to reflect colors as they appear from space before our navigation application for the astronauts could be developed. This is in order that features would be more easily recognizable as an astronaut looked out of one of the 14 windows on the Space Station. See more

On July 6, 2020 the ISS orbited over the Hawaiian Islands. I pre-selected two beautiful shots of the island of Oahu near Honolulu before I came across this oddly familiar shape. After the usual exploration that followed, I discovered that the deja vu sensation was because of an early project we had worked on with the fabulous Mike Walter, five time Emmy award winning broadcast journalist, on a documentary film of a crazy idea to build a massive wind farm initiated by the the...n owner of most of the island of Lanai, David H. Murdock that would have destroyed the rich cultural and historical traditions of the island. What struck me most about the plan was the massive sedimentation that would have flowed into the ocean of this priceless region between Lanai and Oahu which are the largest breeding grounds of the humpback whale in the Pacific. Besides, there would have been the associated problems with laying of the submarine cable that would link the two islands, the latter being the consumer for all the electricity to be generated by the proposed project. I understand the motivation behind Murdock's attempt to replace the dying pineapple farming economy on the island, but am glad that our model simulation of the proposed wind farm on Mike's documentary may have contributed towards Murdock abandoning the idea and selling 98% of Lanai to Larry Ellison of Oracle fame. Ellison has grand plans for the island as a new age tropical resort, but has to include local sentiment as an input to his plans if he expects unqualified success. An extract of our model (Engineering Systems is a subsidiary of NAG) from the documentary (Nathan White was our digital Architect for our project): https://docs.google.com/a/naginc.net/leaf See more