What does Earth look like from Space?

What does Earth look like from space? Perhaps it’s easy to take that view for granted if you’ve watched enough videos… but imagine for a moment that you are watching it from a small window in a house-sized vehicle orbiting between 330 – 410 kilometers above Earth, traveling at an average of 17,227 miles per hour… that’s around 15.7 orbits per day.

To answer this question, you have to take into account how brightly Earth reflects sunlight. And the sun itself is an important factor. As seen from any great distance, Earth appears right next to the sun; from a great distance, the glare of our local star would make Earth difficult or impossible to see.

But spacecraft exploring our solar system have given us marvelous views of Earth. So imagine blasting off aInternational Space Stationd being about 300 kilometers – about 200 miles – above Earth’s surface.