Highlights from the ISS

The space station crews have really stepped up their game lately and are making all sorts of fun photos and videos during their downtime on orbit. Here are two of my recent favorites:

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Although you always hear that space is a vacuum, technically there is still a tiny bit of atmosphere up where the ISS is — enough that over time, the drag would eventually slow the station down enough that it would fall back to Earth. To counteract that, the ISS periodically performs a reboost burn. During the burn, the station is accelerating…but the occupants inside are not. If you don’t hold onto anything, you’ll drift backwards. Or rather, the ISS will speed up but you don’t. Looks like the crew had some fun demonstrating that in the video above.

Last Sunday morning, one of the Russian Progress supply ships undocked from the space station and deorbited. Since it’s just full of trash at that point, it burns up in the atmosphere on its way down. Astronaut Mike Fossum captured a great photo of the fiery reentry — as seen from orbit!