Astronaut Earth Photography From The International Space Station

Over 1.5 million photographs of Earth have been taken by astronauts since 1961, documenting planetary changes. The International Space Station (ISS) crew continues this unbroken record, photographing human-caused and natural events from low Earth orbit. NASA's Crew Earth Observations (CEO) project, managed by SCIOPS, provides this imagery to support research and disaster response.

Use Cases

• Monitor urban growth and reservoir construction by analyzing time-series imagery of specific geographic coordinates.
• Track natural dynamic events like hurricanes, floods, and volcanic eruptions using geotagged photographs.
• Support the International Disaster Charter (IDC) by providing visual data for disaster response event monitoring.
• Study long-term environmental change by comparing photographs of the same location taken from the ISS over different years.
• Analyze the spatial coverage of imagery, which focuses on most populated areas due to the ISS's 51.6° orbital inclination.

Strengths

• Over 1.5 million photographs provide a large visual archive.
• Continuous imagery record from the ISS since its operational start in November 2000.
• Unique perspective from the ISS altitude of 220-286 miles (354-460 km).
• Photographs cover most populated areas globally due to the orbital inclination of 51.6°.

Limitations

• Specific row counts, file formats, and column metadata for the image catalog are unknown.
• Image quality and consistency may vary due to the use of hand-held cameras over decades.
• The dataset's temporal coverage is broad but the exact update frequency and recency are unspecified.

Provenance

Source

NASA Crew Earth Observations (CEO) project, organization listed as SCIOPS.

Collection Method

Hand-held camera photography by astronauts aboard the International Space Station and earlier missions.

Time Range

1961 to present, with continuous coverage from the ISS since November 2000.

Geography

Global, with emphasis on most populated areas due to the ISS orbital inclination of 51.6°.