‘Against the blackness of space’: NASA shares breathtaking photo of moonrise from unique vantage point of space station

“Layers of orange and black appear underneath the horizontal band of blue stretching across the centre of the image. The crescent moon is white and stands out against the blackness of space,” it said in the description of the post on Instagram.In a latest social media post, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has shared breathtaking pictures of moonrise from a “unique vantage point” in the International Space Station.

“Layers of orange and black appear underneath the horizontal band of blue stretching across the centre of the image. The crescent moon is white and stands out against the blackness of space,” it said in the description of the post on Instagram.

The photo, clicked by astronaut Matthew Dominick, shows a crescent moon above the Earth’s atmosphere. He described it as “A sliver of a moon rises out of noctilucent clouds and appears to look towards the horizon awaiting the imminent sunrise.”

Dominick is the commander of NASA and SpaceX’s Crew-8 mission which launched to the ISS on 3rd March 2024. It has a Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin and NASA astronauts Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps.

Notably, the main purpose of the experiments on the ISS is to understand how much of the science is needed to sustain life on another world.

NASA has continuously shared the images from the ISS. In February, it shared a photo of Earth and Moon in one frame.

“The Earth appears blue with faint white clouds in the atmosphere, stretching from the bottom left to the top right of the image. Black space surrounds the Moon,” it said.

NASA has been in news for the problem in Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, which took NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore to the ISS earlier this month. They were scheduled to return home after a week, but haven’t been able to do so after the aircraft encountered several problems.

Starliner already had one small helium leak when it rocketed into orbit and several more leaks sprung up during the flight. Helium is used to pressurise fuel for the thrusters.

Now, NASA and Boeing are undertaking some tests to understand the problem and resolve it. Reports suggest that it may even take months for the astronauts to be back.