Earlier this year, NASA installed four off-the-shelf HD cameras on the International Space Station (ISS) to test how they would hold up when exposed to space radiation (down on Earth, we're shielded by the planet's magnetic field).
The space station's cameras beam their footage to Earth, and anyone can watch the livestream. Here's a 30X time-lapse that our video team created of footage from earlier this week:
The International Space Station orbits the Earth so fast — at roughly 17,000 mph — that the sun rises or sets roughly every 45 minutes, although we cut out some of the “night” for your viewing pleasure.
There are currently three people living on the International Space Station, one of two space stations orbiting Earth (the other is China’s Tiangong-1, which was launched in 2011).
