Polaris Dawn’s high-speed journey home captured in photo from ISS

A remarkable photo taken by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) shows SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn Crew Dragon capsule entering Earth’s atmosphere at high speed as it returned home with four crew members on board early on Sunday morning.

Close examination of the image (top), which was captured by recent ISS arrival Don Pettit, shows the a streak of light and the Crew Dragon, with some city lights visible in the background. The five-day Polaris Dawn mission was carrying four non-professional astronauts and performed the first-ever privately funded spacewalk while also taking humans to the furthest point from Earth since the Apollo missions five decades ago.

“Polaris Dawn entry this morning,” Pettit wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter) accompanying the image. “I photographed it at 7:23 a.m. GMT from the Cupola on ISS. In addition to the multi-colored entry trail over Florida, the basic cone shape of the Dragon capsule can be seen.”

Pettit said he used a Nikon Z9 and a 200mm lens to capture the shot at f2, 1/400th second, ISO 25600, from the station’s seven-window Cupola module, which offers the best views from the station of Earth and beyond.

Also posting on X, fellow NASA astronaut and ISS inhabitant Matthew Dominick described the scene aboard the ISS as Pettit took the shot.

“So many of us were packed into the Cupola this morning to watch Polaris Dawn come back to Earth. It was fun watching Pettit make this shot happen amongst five human bodies jammed in the Cupola. Actually, I think having lots of folks jammed in helped him stabilize his body and thus the camera for the shot.”

Pettit, at 69 NASA’s oldest active astronaut, arrived at the ISS last week together with cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

This is Pettit’s fourth spaceflight. During his earlier missions the experienced astronaut has earned a reputation for capturing impressive images from orbit, so we can expect plenty more cool content from him over the next six months.