< ISS047-E-53582 >
| NASA Photo ID | ISS047-E-53582 |
| Focal Length | 400mm |
| Date taken | 2016.04.10 |
| Time taken | 12:32:58 GMT |
1000 x 666 pixels 540 x 360 pixels 4928 x 3280 pixels 720 x 480 pixels 720 x 480 pixels 4928 x 3280 pixels 640 x 426 pixels
Photo center point: 45.8° N, 63.3° E
Photo center point by machine learning: 45.66° N, 63.34° E
Country or Geographic Name: | KAZAKHSTAN |
Features: | BAIKONUR, SYRDARYA R., RAILROAD, HIGHWAY |
| Features Found Using Machine Learning: | |
Cloud Cover Percentage: | 10 (1-10)% |
Sun Elevation Angle: | 20° |
Sun Azimuth: | 261° |
Camera: | Nikon D4 Electronic Still Camera |
Focal Length: | 400mm |
Camera Tilt: | 26 degrees |
Format: | 4928E: 4928 x 3280 pixel CMOS sensor, 36.0mm x 23.9mm, total pixels: 16.6 million, Nikon FX format |
Film Exposure: | |
| Additional Information | |
| Width | Height | Annotated | Cropped | Purpose | Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1000 pixels | 666 pixels | No | No | Earth From Space collection | Download Image |
| 540 pixels | 360 pixels | Yes | No | Earth From Space collection | Download Image |
| 4928 pixels | 3280 pixels | No | No | NASA's Earth Observatory web site | Download Image |
| 720 pixels | 480 pixels | Yes | No | NASA's Earth Observatory web site | Download Image |
| 720 pixels | 480 pixels | Yes | Yes | NASA's Earth Observatory web site | Download Image |
| 4928 pixels | 3280 pixels | No | No | Download Image | |
| 640 pixels | 426 pixels | No | No | Download Image |
On the almost featureless expanses of the semidesert grasslands of Kazakhstan, crew members aboard the International Space Station (ISS) usually follow the long line of the Syr Darya River as the main visual cue to find the spaceport from which they launch--a favorite topic for space-based photographers. A major bend in the river shows where the town of Baikonur lies, home to the Cosmodrome, what has been termed the world's first and largest space launch facility. Baikonur (at image center) is well known to astronauts and cosmonauts alike. They arrive at the small airstrip from their homes (at image left) in many parts of the world. (For scale, the airstrip is 3.4 km (2.1 miles) long.)
The smaller straight road going north from Baikonur takes the astronauts and cosmonauts to the launching area (top margin of the image). This is the last section of travel for the crews before they launch into space en route to the Internal Space Station. The most recent crew members to travel this route were Kate Rubins (USA), Anatoly Ivanishin (Russia) and Takuya Onishi (Japan). They arrived a few days ago (11th July) for their months-long stay in the ISS. At the end of their flights crews return to Earth, landing on these same almost featureless plains in a capsule assisted by parachute.
The railroad that crosses the view in a series of straight lines brings rocket parts to Baikonur from Russia. The highway between Orenburg in Russia and Tashkent in neighboring Uzbekistan follows a roughly parallel route. The dark areas (at image lower left) are wetlands that indicate the old bed of the Syr Darya at the point where the river used to flow in a more southerly course to the Aral Sea, 200 km (120 miles) to the west. The semidesert in the Baikonur region displays a patchy landscape of irregular vegetation-free scalds, dry lakes, sand dunes and bare rock.
