Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, who has already made his name as a prolific Twitterer, has gone one step better this time by posting spectacular videos of the earth and the moon on his own YouTube channel.
He posted on Monday a two-minute footage of the earth filmed from the window of the new observation deck on the orbiter on the International Space Station, the Daily Mail reported.
“Welcome to the journey over Madagascar! Enjoy the out-of-the-world view,” Noguchi wrote as the caption for his video that clearly shows the world’s fourth largest island under patchy cloud, as the space station zooms at 17,500 MPH over head.
The 44-year-old astronaut, who has 1,25,000 followers on Twitter and regularly sends live pictures from the ISS, had sent last week a one minute clip showing the moon slowly setting into the horizon.
Noguchi has been orbiting 200 miles above earth since December 2009 and is due to come back this June. His last ISS mission was in 2005.
He was taking advantage of the Italian-made cupola installed on the new Tranquility module last month. The 17-million pound observation deck has one central window and six outer windows, which give panoramic views. It is used by crew members to operate the robotic arms on the station as well as monitor the approach of supply ships, the report said.
Noguchi is the only astronaut on video sharing website YouTube and is by far the most active of the ISS crew on Twitter, posting in both English and Japanese.
On Monday, he said the crew have a rest day “except for a few medical ops and our favourite exercise time”.
The micro-blogging service seems particularly suited to the busy astronauts, who can use it to describe their daily routines in just 140 characters.
The first live Twitter post was sent by astronaut Timothy Creamer on January 25, after the space station finally went online this year. Before this, astronauts were sending Twitter updates to Houston Mission Control which would then post on their behalf.
