Check Out This Photo of Buffalo From Space

Buffalo, Western New York, and Southern Ontario is a truly remarkable area to live and work in.

There are tons of reasons for its greatness: the people, access to the Great Lakes, our sports teams, and of course the food.

Being that we live here, sometimes it's easy to forget how great the area can be. That is until you get a reminder from the International Space Station.

What Is The International Space Station

Originally launched on November 20, 1998, the International Space Station, or ISS, is a low Earth orbit modular space station that is owned and managed by 5 countries in partnership: NASA, Russia's Roscosmos, Canada's CSA, Japan's JAXA, and Europe's ESA.

The ISS, which weighs about 1 million pounds, is about the size of an NFL football field and about the same amount of internal space as the average American 5-bedroom house. There is typically a crew of 7 Astronauts that live on the space station full time, usually spending around 6-months on the station at a time.

The ISS sits in what's called a low Earth orbit, meaning it's typically closer than 1,200 miles from the Earth's surface. Normally, the ISS is floating around 250 miles above Earth. While it's above the earth, it typically travels at more than 17,000 mph.

At that speed, the ISS will orbit Earth every 90 or so minutes, completing around 15 orbits every day.

Check Out This Photo Of Buffalo From The International Space Station

During its travels around Earth, the Astronauts on the space station take quite a few pictures of the moon, stars, and surroundings for NASA. Often they take pictures of Earth for all sorts of reasons. Those reasons could be for research, weather, or other scientific purposes.

On July 28, 2023, at approximately 4:12 pm EST, the ISS was in the middle of one of its 15 orbits around Earth when it snapped this amazing picture of Buffalo, Western New York, and Southern Ontario.

In this photo, which was taken with a Nikon D5 using a 400mm lens, you can see several landmarks like Crystal Beach, Canalside, and Highmark Stadium.

NASA also has tons of other photos of Buffalo archived on their website, you can check those out here if you're interested.

The International Space Station is one of the greatest feats of technology and ingenuity that we've seen. Check out these photos of the space station:

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