Google Street View has launched an interactive tour of the International Space Station on the 48th anniversary of the first manned mission to the moon.
The tour, which can be accessed via the Planets page of Google Maps , lets you virtually explore all 15 modules and 2 visiting docking vehicles of the ISS in 360 degrees.
Highlights include the Quest Airlock, where crew members begin their space walks, the Cupola, which provides spectacular views of Earth and celestial objects, and the new Bigelow Expandable Activity Module - a kind of inflatable astronaut hotel on the side of the ISS.
Annotations appear alongside the 360-degree images, highlighting things like where the astronauts work out to stay physically fit, what kind of food they eat, and where they do scientific experiments.
The tour was developed with the help of European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet, who spent six months aboard the ISS as a flight engineer before returning to Earth in June 2017.
Pesquet was responsible for capturing the Street View imagery in zero gravity, to show what the ISS looks like from the inside.
"Because of the particular constraints of living and working in space, it wasn't possible to collect Street View using Google's usual methods," he explained in a blog post.
"Instead, the Street View team worked with NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas and Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama to design a gravity-free method of collecting the imagery using DSLR cameras and equipment already on the ISS.
"Then I collected still photos in space, that were then sent down to Earth where they were stitched together to create panoramic 360 degree imagery of the ISS."
He added that the astronauts had to do a lot of troubleshooting before collecting the final imagery that appears in Street View today.
The ISS has technical equipment on all surfaces, with lots of cables and a complicated layout with modules shooting off in all directions.
"It's a busy place, with six crew members carrying out research and maintenance activities 12 hours a day," said Pesquet.
"There are a lot of obstacles up there, and we had limited time to capture the imagery, so we had to be confident that our approach would work. Oh, and there's that whole zero gravity thing."
This is Google's first gravity-free Street View collection, and the first with annotations - a feature previously only available for Google Arts and Culture museums.
"Over the last decade, a lot has changed - the technology we use, the appearance of the planet - but the goal of Google Maps has remained the same: to help you navigate and discover new corners of the Earth...and now beyond," Google said.
Originally published on Mirror
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