You have probably seen lots of video footage of late that has been filmed with a portable ‘action camera’ mounted on someone’s body or their bike/car/surfboard/dog etc, giving the viewer that ‘almost there’ experience. It has been popular as a technique in film and television for a long time but the arrival of small, affordable, purpose built camera and attachment technology (the GoPro brand was first but there are others coming onto the market now) has made the experience available to anybody who wants it. Even NASA astronauts have been playing around with it. In their case, it’s a view of the world that, let’s be honest, will only ever be available to a handful of us humans.
This footage was taken by U.S. astronaut Terry Virts during two ‘spacewalks’ – or ‘extravehicular activity’ (EVAs) to be technically correct – on the International Space Station on February 25, 2015 and March 1, 2015. They are working on the exterior of the space station doing some form of maintenance. Watching it makes us feel like we’re there, fixing the International Space Station ourselves. It’s almost silent, except for the scrapes and clicks of the tools and extraordinary robotic instruments they use. A hand enters the frame from time to time, or a foot. And there are different views of the space station’s exterior as the astronaut moves around. But the curve of the earth below and the changing patterns of cloud and land masses far below is breathtaking, compelling and a little bit eerie.
We found this on one of our favourite science websites – www.sciencealert.com.
