Now You Can Visit The International Space Station In Google Street View
You can now walk the streets of space!
Google Street View has partnered with the European Space Agency to create a walk-through of the International Space Station.
BuzzFeed News
Street View already lets you visit and explore the Great Barrier Reef, the plains of the Serengeti, or the storefront of that nail salon you pulled up on Google Maps. This interactive view of the ISS is the first Street View of anything beyond earth. The ISS has been continuously occupied by humans for 16 years.
NASA told BuzzFeed News that the newly released walk-through covers the entire habitable portion of the ISS and the interiors of two commercial spacecraft, Orbital ATK's Cygnus and SpaceX's Dragon.
Here's the Earth, but from space:
There are fun little annotations that help explain life on the ISS.
Like where do astronauts sleep?
And where do they eat?
Google and the ESA made a video about the process of creating the simulation.
Instead of the usual camera-equipped car, Thomas Pesquet, an ESA astronaut who lived aboard the ISS from January to June 2017, captured the images used in the "Street View" of the ISS. Cue inspiring music.
Fun fact: Pesquet's mission was led by Peggy Whitson, who, at 56, is the oldest woman to fly in space, and the first woman to lead two expeditions to the station, according to Google's blog post.