ISS astronaut posts stunning time-lapse of mission highlights

Thomas Pesquet is preparing to leave the International Space Station after a six-month stay.

The French astronaut has been very busy during his stay aboard the outpost in orbit 25o miles above Earth, performing several spacewalks, working on science experiments in microgravity conditions, making tours of the space station and capturing amazing images of Earth from above.

With his mission set to end in the coming weeks, Pesquet has just shared a great time-lapse video (below) featuring some incredible footage captured during the mission. The images feature everything from auroras and lightning to spacewalks and descents of spaceships.

According to the European Space Agency (ESA), which helped produce the video, the time-lapse images were captured by a camera setup that takes two frames per second. It was then edited to play at 25 frames per second. ESA said that most of the footage in the video is therefore played at around 12 times faster than the actual speed.

In a tweet accompanying the video, Pesquet urged space fans to “get comfortable, launch [the footage] on your biggest home screen and enjoy! “

Pesquet is one of SpaceX’s Crew-2 astronauts that launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in April. The other three crew members are Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur of NASA, as well as Akihiko Hoshide of the Aerospace Exploration Agency of Japan.

NASA is currently evaluating the crew’s return dates to Earth. The current priority of the space agency is to launch the Crew-3 mission to the ISS. It was originally scheduled to launch last weekend, but was pushed back to Wednesday, November 3 due to poor weather conditions. But earlier this week, he was again delayed due to a minor medical issue involving one of Crew-3’s astronauts.

NASA is now targeting Saturday, November 6 for the launch of Crew-3 to the ISS. TechToSee has all the information you need to watch the early stages of the mission live, as well as the spacecraft docking procedure and welcome ceremony aboard the station.