
ISS010-E-13539
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Issaouane Erg, Algeria: The Issaouane Erg (sand sea) is
located in eastern Algeria between the Tinrhert Plateau to the north
and the Fadnoun Plateau to the south. Ergs are vast areas of moving
sand with little to no vegetation cover. Considered to be part of the
Sahara Desert, the Issaouane Erg covers an area of approximately
38,000 km2. These complex dunes form the active southwestern border
of the sand sea. The most common landforms in the image are star
dunes and barchan (or crescent) dunes. Small linear dunes appear at
top left. Star dunes are formed when sand is transported from
variable wind directions, whereas barchan dunes form in a single
dominant wind regime. The superimposition of two dune types suggests
that wind regimes have changed through time. The active nature of
this portion of the Erg is well illustrated by this image—smaller
dunes form and migrate along the flanks of the larger dunes and sand
ridges. Occasional precipitation fills basins formed by the dunes; as
the water evaporates, salt deposits are left behind which appear as
bluish-white areas.
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ISS010-E-13393
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Mt. Damavand, Iran: Located approximately 50 kilometers
northeast of Tehran, Mt. Damavand is an impressive stratovolcano that
reaches 5,670 meters (18,598 feet) in elevation. Part of the Alborz
Mountain Range that borders the Caspian Sea to the north, Damavand is
a young volcano that has formed mostly during the Holocene Epoch
(over approximately the last 10,000 years). The western flank of the
volcano includes solidified lava flows with flow levees—“walls”
formed as the side edges of flowing lava cooled rapidly, forming a
chute that channeled the hotter, interior lava. Two such flows with
well-defined levees are highlighted by snow on the
mountainside. Damavand is the highest peak in Iran and the highest
volcano in the Middle East. The mountain and its surrounding areas
are popular hiking, climbing, and skiing destinations. While no
historic eruptions of the volcano are recorded, hot springs on the
flanks of the volcano and fumaroles (steam vents) in the summit
crater suggest that a hot or cooling magma body is still present
beneath the volcano. This continuing activity, while minor, indicates
a dormant rather than extinct volcano.
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ISS010-E-13807
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Shenyang, China: The city of Shenyang is China’s sixth largest
city with a population of over 4 million residents in the urban core.
The city is the major industrial, commercial, and cultural center of
northeastern China (the region historically known as Manchuria). Its
geographic location on the floodplains of the Hun and Liao Rivers
ensured an early agrarian economy that was later replaced by
industrialization and natural resource extraction. Shenyang was first
settled as a Mongol trading center in the 10th century, and served as
the capitol of the Manchu government from the 17th through 20th
centuries. Currently the city serves as the capitol of Liaoning
Province. Shenyang’s role as a major industrial center is
illustrated by this astronaut photograph. Snow cover provides a clear
contrast between urbanized (dark grey, center of image) and rural
regions (white to light grey). The major portion of the local economy
is devoted to industries such as metal smelting, coal mining, and
petrochemical processing. Several southeast-trending plumes from
industrial facilities are visible in the image. The high density of
industrial land use in the Shenyang metropolitan area has lead to
significant air, water, and soil pollution in the region. Recently,
several initiatives to reduce pollution levels and establish
environmentally sound development guidelines have begun with support
from local government and the United Nations.
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ISS010-E-13029
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Coastal Change, Amazon River Mouth: Over a period of
approximately four years a major island near the mouth of the Amazon
River has been dramatically modified as the arms of the river have
shifted. In the image above, an oblique image, captured by an
astronaut with a handheld camera in January 2005 (base image), is
contrasted with a false-color Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus
(ETM+) image from 2000 (inset). In the Landsat inset, green indicates
rainforest, pinks and mauves are low-growing, colonizing vegetation
on tidally inundated areas, and the Amazon River is blue. The
island is about 5 kilometers long and is located near 0.3° N 50.2°
W). Between 2000 and 2005 the channel on the west side of the island
has shifted to the northwest by eroding ~200 meters of the mainland
shoreline and accreting (depositing) sediment on the west side of the
island, broadly maintaining the width of the channel. White lines
around the island in the inset image indicate the modern shorelines
captured in the astronaut photograph. In the handheld photograph, the
island shoreline of 2000 prominently demarcates older vegetated from
new, not-yet-vegetated land surfaces (top arrow). By contrast, the
northern channel (to the right of the island) has significantly
widened, eroding almost 1 kilometer of the northern end of the
island, as well as narrowing a smaller island downstream (lower
right). A more important but subtler effect has been the accumulation
of sediment on the upstream (left-hand) two-thirds of the island,
accompanied by the establishment of permanent vegetation (dark
green). Vegetation appears to anchor small streams in place, but
discharge in major arms of the Amazon overcomes the cohesive power of
vegetation so that large channels can be comparatively mobile. Other
islands in the Amazon mouth are also known to have moved by hundreds
of meters per year due to the processes of erosion and deposition.
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ISS010-E-8224
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Mount Olympus, Greece: Mount Olympus is the highest peak in
Greece. The 2,917-meter (9,570-foot) summit is the tallest in a
mountain chain that runs north into Bulgaria and south into Turkey,
via the Cyclades Islands. In this winter view, Olympus is the only
peak with a dusting of snow—perhaps the reason its name in classical
Greek means “the luminous one.” In Greek mythology, the peak was
inhabited by the Twelve Olympians, the most famous gods of the
ancient Greeks. North of Mount Olympus lies Macedonia, the homeland
of Alexander the Great. Climbing the famous mountain is a favorite
tourist activity today. The eastern slopes of Olympus and its
neighboring peaks drop sheerly into the Thermaikos Gulf, a northern
arm of the Aegean Sea. White cirrus clouds partially obscure the
shoreline near the city of Thessaloniki at upper right. This major
port is spread along the shores of a small and well protected bay.
West (left) of the Olympus chain of mountains lies a large plain
broken by several west-to-east-trending ridges. In the northern part,
a tuquoise-colored lake sits along the Aliakmon River. To the south
is the town of Larisa, at the focus point of a series of transport
routes.
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ISS010-E-23035
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Rollout of Shuttle Discovery, Kennedy Space Center:
International Space Station Astronaut Leroy Chiao, like the rest of
NASA, tracks key milestones for the Space Shuttle Return-to-Flight
operations. A lucky overpass of the Space Station over Florida on
April 6, 2005, allowed Leroy and his crew mate Salizhan Sharipov a
unique view of the rollout of the Space Shuttle Discovery. At the
time of his observations, Discovery was approximately midway between
the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and launch pad 39-B at Kennedy
Space Center in Florida. The Shuttle, mated with its solid-fuel
booster rockets and orange external fuel tank, is visible on the wide
Crawler-Transporter track (marked with white box and shown in an
inset image). Moving at a maximum speed of 1 mile per hour (1.6
km/hr), the massive Crawler-Transporter, laden with a
launch-configured Shuttle and Mobile Launch Platform, takes
approximately 13 hours to move between the VAB and pad 39-B. Launch
of the Discovery will mark NASA’s “Return to Flight” following the
loss of the Shuttle Columbia with its crew on February 1, 2003. The
primary goal for the upcoming Discovery mission will be to test
several vehicle modifications and damage-assessment data sources,
tools, and procedures. These modifications include a modified design
for the external fuel tank, more cameras focused on the launch and
ascent of the Shuttle, and detailed imaging of the Shuttle’s
heat-resistant tiles and reinforced carbon-carbon surfaces on the
wings and nosecap.
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ISS010-E-20111
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Lima Metropolitan Area, Peru: Located on the broad alluvial
fan of the Rimac River, Lima is the capital of Peru and the only
megacity (7.7 million inhabitants in 2002) located on the western
coastline of South America. The city was established by Francisco
Pizarro in 1535 and became an important colonial port, linking silver
mines of the Altiplano of the high Andes Mountains with the
burgeoning Spanish empire. During the mid-20th century, significant
numbers of people relocated from rural mountain communities into the
Lima metropolitan area. Problems now facing the metropolitan region
include developing adequate water resources, controlling pollution,
and preparing for natural hazards such as earthquakes and
landslides. This astronaut photograph depicts the wealthier San
Isidro and Miraflores quarters of Lima. This part of the metropolitan
area is characterized by numerous vegetated parks, golf courses (such
as the Lima Golf Course—approximately 1 km long), and greenbelts
interspersed with residential and commercial areas. The higher
proportion of dark asphalt in the street grid of the residential and
commercial areas lends a purple coloration to the left portion of the
astronaut photograph (downtown Lima is to the north). Regions with
fewer built materials and vegetation are light tan. Wave patterns are
visible approaching beaches, popular tourist destinations, in the
lower half of the image.
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ISS010-E-23748
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Spring Thaw, Straits of Mackinac: The Mackinac Bridge spans a
stretch of water five miles wide between Michigan’s lower and upper
peninsulas. The strait connects Lakes Michigan (left) and Huron
(right). The bridge is a combination of pier-supported spans with a
high, central suspension sector that allows passage of lake steamers.
The suspension sector is the longest in the Americas (8, 614 feet or
1.6 miles). Prior to construction of the bridge, the only passage
across the straits was by ferryboat. This pair of images shows the
Mackinac Straits while they were still frozen (top) and as they began
to thaw (below). The March 22 view shows shipping lanes opened by ice
breakers. A narrow passage connects the cleared shipping channel to
the small town of St. Ignace at the north end of the bridge (Mackinaw
City appears at the south end). The April view shows the ice broken
into a series of irregular rafts that appear gray against bright
water. The whitish appearance of the water is not snow or ice, but
instead is sunlight glinting off the water back to camera. The
shipping channel is maintained even through remnants of the ice mass,
but the ice ridges can be hazardous to shipping until the last of the
ice breaks up.
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ISS010-E-22495
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London, United Kingdom: Numerous well-known landmarks appear
in this detailed view of London taken from the International Space
Station. To capture the shot, the astronaut had to look back along
the Space Station’s ground track, from a position over northern
Germany. The most striking visual features are green open spaces such
as Regent’s Park, Hyde Park and St. James’s Park east of Buckingham
Palace. Many smaller parks indicate why Londoners are proud of being
able to walk miles through the city mainly on grass. The River
Thames—with its bridges and barges (some of the more than 14,000
craft registered to sail the Thames)—is the axis upon which the city
was founded in Roman times. The relatively small area known as the
City of London coincides with the ancient walled Roman city of
Londinium on the north bank of the river (the line of the wall is
marked closely for almost its entire length by modern streets), and
includes St. Paul’s Cathedral near where the Roman temple stood. For
scale, the river is 265 meters wide near St. Paul’s. The City is the
financial center while Westminster is the center of government,
including the Houses of Parliament and 10 Downing Street, where the
British Prime Minister lives. Several large structures visible in
this image are railroad stations: three serving areas north of London
(Euston, St. Pancras, and King’s Cross), and Waterloo Station serving
southern Britain. The London Eye, a famous Ferris wheel 140 meters
high, is situated on an oval island in the River Thames, visible just
west of Waterloo Station. Many larger buildings can also be
identified, partly because they cast shadows— Buckingham Palace, St
Paul’s Cathedral, and the Tate Modern art museum (a converted power
station whose 99-meter chimney was designed to fall just short of the
crest of St Paul’s dome).
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ISS010-E-23451
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Khartoum, Sudan: Sudan’s capital city, Khartoum, translates as
“Elephant’s Trunk.” The name describes the shape of the Nile where
the Blue and the White Nile Rivers unite to form the single Nile
River that flows northward into Egypt. This image shows the rivers
near the end of the dry season. The White Nile (western branch)
runs through Sudan from Uganda. The White Nile originates in
equatorial regions, where rainfall occurs throughout the year; as a
result, it runs at a nearly constant rate throughout the year. The
Blue Nile, nearly dry this time of year, flows out of the Ethiopian
highlands, where rainfall is more seasonal. The Blue Nile swells in
the late summer and early fall with rains from the summer monsoons.
The flow at these times can be so great that the volume is too much
for the river's channel, causing the Nile to flow backward at the
junction. In recent years, floods in Khartoum have occurred in August
with heavy monsoon rainfall. Khartoum is one of the largest Muslim
cities in North Africa, but it has a fairly short history. Founded as
a military outpost in 1821, a Sudanese flag has only flown over the
city since 1956. Today, Khartoum is home to more than a million
people, including many refugees, both from neighboring countries as
well as from an ongoing civil war in southern Sudan. The city has a
low profile, dominated by sprawling areas of small buildings that are
supported by little infrastructure.
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