Photographer Joel Kowsky captured an amazing sight on June 25. Kowsky photographed the International Space Station (ISS) crossing the Sun’s face while a pair of astronauts, Thomas Pesquet and Shane Kimbrough, were spacewalking outside the ISS.
You may find Pesquet’s name familiar. Last month, we wrote about one of Pesquet’s images which illustrated how quickly the ISS orbits Earth. Pesquet is an active photographer, and you can stay up to date with his experience in space by following him on Twitter.
As the ISS performed a solar transit, Pesquet and Kimbrough worked outside the station to install a Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA) on the orbiting laboratory. NASA has compiled Kowsky’s series of images of the two astronauts at work into a time lapse video and mosaic, seen below.
Kowsky captured images from Nellysford, Virginia, as the ISS traveled across the face of the Sun at a speed of around 29,000 kph (18,000 mph). The composite image below was made from seven frames. Coincidentally, the ISS currently has seven crew members on board.
‘This composite image made from seven frames shows the International Space Station, with a crew of seven on board, in silhouette as it transits the Sun at roughly five miles per second, Friday, June 25, 2021, from near Nellysford, Va. Onboard are Expedition 65 NASA astronauts Megan McArthur, Mark Vande Hei, Shane Kimbrough, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Thomas Pesquet, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Oleg Novitskiy. At the time of the transit, Kimbrough and Pesquet were working outside on the station’s port 6 truss to install the second Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA) on the 4B power channel.’ Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky
The photographed spacewalk took six hours and 45 minutes and was Pesquet and Kimbrough’s third in less than two weeks. The iROSA panel the pair installed was the second of a planned six to be installed at the station.