ISS transit across the solar disc,2018. The dark object near centre is the International Space Station (ISS) crossing (transiting) the disc of the Sun. This image was taken on 7 October 2018,from Suffolk,Virginia,USA. The ISS orbits the Earth every 90 minutes at an altitude of around 400 kilometres,travelling at 7.8 kilometres per second. Here,the ISS took around a second to (transit) cross the disc of the Sun. On board were the three crew members of Expedition 57: Commander Alexander Gerst of ESA (European Space Agency),Serena Aunon-Chancellor of NASA,and Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos. The distances of the Moon and Sun from the Earth are 400,000 kilometres and 150 million kilometres respectively. |