Want to tour the International Space Station? You can now use Google Street View
Google has launched an interactive tour of the International Space Station (ISS), allowing anyone to log in and explore from Earth.
It was only this week when Japanese scientists showed us how a tiny camera-touting robot ball drone is floating around the station taking footage and acting as a conduit between astronauts and ground teams, but now Google has given us even more of a glimpse of life in space.
On Thursday, Google said the latest update to Google Street View includes all 15 modules of the ISS, as well as two visiting docking vehicles as a 360-degree panorama. The tour has been launched to mark the 48th anniversary of the first manned mission landing on the moon, which took place on 20 July 1969.
The Columbus Research Laboratory is a multifunctional pressurized laboratory permanently attached to Node 2 of the ISS. The Columbus laboratory's flexibility provides room for the researchers on the ground, aided by the station's crew, to conduct thousands of experiments in life sciences, materials sciences, fluid physics and other research in a weightless environment not possible on Earth.
This is also the first Street View tour since the introduction of Google Arts & Culture museums which includes annotations, helping us understand the complex world astronauts live in aboard the ISS.
In a Google blog post, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet said the annotations highlight everything from where astronauts work to stay physically fit, what kinds of food they eat, and where scientific experiments take place.
Take a tour with us below:
Explore the International Space Station with Google (in pictures)
From now, space enthusiasts can access the tour through the Planets page of Google Maps by clicking on the image of the International Space Station.