“The sheer height of the Himalayan plateau – known as the roof of the world – is captured in a spectacular shot taken by one of the keenest photographers on the International Space Station.
Cloud formations swirl around the base of the plateau in the image captured by Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers, but the shot offers a view of Everest and its neighbours that few human beings will ever see, from 245 miles above our planet.
André Kuipers – a keen photographer – launched to the ISS on 21 December last year from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan, on a Soyuz spacecraft as flight engineer for Expeditions 30 and 31, together with Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and NASA astronaut Don Pettit.
They remained in space for nearly six months, during which time Kuipers took some of the most spectactular shots from the space station, hosted on his Flickr page and the European Space Agency‘s page.
‘I remember how thin the Earth atmosphere looks like from space and how black the Universe is. It made me realise that billions of people live in a very fragile planet. We really should take care of it,’ says Kuipers.
Kuipers is medical doctor who has been actively involved in microgravity research for more than ten years. ‘The data I will collect from my own body can bring valuable information about the effects of weightlessness on the human body. This research may help in preparation for a future mission to Mars,’ he says.
Kuipers has since returned to Earth.