It's been a rough holiday season for everyone — indeed, a rough few years. But seeing the Earth from space tends to put all of our problems into perspective. The phenomenon even has a name: the "Overview Effect."
With that in mind, start 2022 with this amazing time-lapse video of the Earth taken by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, who made it while visiting the International Space Station as a tourist. The video constitutes exactly one orbit around the Earth, a view that Maezawa describes a "breathtaking."
The 24-second video shows the Earth spinning at a pace that is apt to cause vertigo, with the International Space Station's solar panels rotating in the foreground. It's a sobering view of our little planet; a reminder that the problems we argue about on Twitter and elsewhere are relatively meaningless in the grand scheme of the universe.
Maezawa's trip to space puts him at the leading edge of the space tourism trend that will only grow in 2022. Even now, Blue Origin is working on its own private space station, and Maezawa hopes to catch a trip around the moon on a future SpaceX flight.
Space tourism is a fraught subject for a lot of reasons, but for now at least we can enjoy this glorious view and reflect on what 2022 might hold for humanity.
Blogroll image credit: Frank Lee / Getty Images
Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN
Continue reading...
With that in mind, start 2022 with this amazing time-lapse video of the Earth taken by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, who made it while visiting the International Space Station as a tourist. The video constitutes exactly one orbit around the Earth, a view that Maezawa describes a "breathtaking."
The 24-second video shows the Earth spinning at a pace that is apt to cause vertigo, with the International Space Station's solar panels rotating in the foreground. It's a sobering view of our little planet; a reminder that the problems we argue about on Twitter and elsewhere are relatively meaningless in the grand scheme of the universe.
Maezawa's trip to space puts him at the leading edge of the space tourism trend that will only grow in 2022. Even now, Blue Origin is working on its own private space station, and Maezawa hopes to catch a trip around the moon on a future SpaceX flight.
Space tourism is a fraught subject for a lot of reasons, but for now at least we can enjoy this glorious view and reflect on what 2022 might hold for humanity.
Blogroll image credit: Frank Lee / Getty Images
Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN
Continue reading...