ISS Astronaut Captures Timelapse of Earth as Space Station Does a Cartwheel

Matt Growcoot
Three side-by-side fisheye photos from space show a spacecraft with Earth’s curved horizon; one shows sunlight, one with clouds over ocean, and one with a reddish landmass, all from the perspective of the spacecraft.
The ISS cartwheeled to position itself for a cargo resupply.

A NASA astronaut has shared a timelapse video taken during a rare “orbital cartwheel” when the International Space Station (ISS) changed its orientation and altitude to accommodate the SpaceX CRS-33 cargo resupply mission.

Zena Cardman returned from space after a five-month mission on the ISS last month and yesterday she shared a “favorite” timelapse captured during the Crew-11 expedition.

“The International Space Station rarely makes big changes to its orientation,” Cardman writes on X. “But we were lucky to experience such maneuvers (flipping around to fly butt-first, then flipping back again) before and after each SpaceX CRS-33 reboost.”

The 60x speed timelapse was captured on a Nikon Z9. Cardman explains that it was “lots of trial and error”, but the Z9 cameras make it simpler to capture day-to-night-to-day transitions. ISS astronauts living on the ISS experience 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets in a 24-hour period.

“Full auto with highlight weighted metering and tweaks to minimum shutter speed and max ISO,” Cardman says of her settings. “This was one of my favorites since it captures a little of everything — sunset, lightning storms, air glow, moon glint, stars, and sunrise — as we did one (actually very slow) orbital cartwheel from Atlantic to Pacific.”

While it looks like an intense ride, Cardman says it’s not at all. “This reorientation maneuver is imperceptible for those on board,” she explains. “60x speed makes it look a lot spicier. You can feel acceleration from the reboost itself, but it’s subtle.”

She also notes that a multi-axis swing like this one is “energetically lower than just yawing the ship 180 degrees”.

During the Crew-11 mission, Cardman captured incredible video of colorful aurora lights dancing above the Earth’s surface.

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