Ever wonder what Earth looks like from space, as captured by a nanosatellite? If so, the European Space Agency (ESA) will show you just that, as the image above was snapped by a tiny 2mm coin-sized camera lens on the TRISAT-R CubeSat from Slovenia.
The shoebox-sized TRISAT-R CubeSat was made from three standardized 10-cm boxes and marks Slovenia’s second space mission. This nanosatellite flew on Europe’s inaugural Vega-C launch last year to medium-Earth orbit, at 6000 km (3728 mi) up. Its orbital path took it right through the heart of the ionosphere, which is an electrically active layer of Earth’s atmospherem as well as the inner Van Allen radiation belt.
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The resulting picture of Earth is very low resolution as these highly miniaturized cameras were not intended to perform terrestrial imaging, plus TRISAT-R satellite employs magnetorquers for its attitude control, so that precision pointing is difficult to achieve. Our main interest has been in capturing examples of the ‘Black Sun effect’ – commonplace in terrestrial digital imaging, where over-saturation of pixels can cause very bright areas to appear dark. We have succeeded in these investigations, but have also been lucky enough to acquire images like these,” said Dr. Kramberger, Project Manager from the Iztok Kramberger of the University of Maribor.
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