A Guy Was In An Airplane When He Captured This Shot That NASA Went Nuts Over
June 16, 2015 #expanse
 
By August West
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Trevor Mahlmann dreams big. And I mean real big. He's a aeronautical and astronautical engineering student, photographer, and all around awesome person. With some meticulous planning, he was able to calculate where his flight path on Southwest would be in relation to the International Space Station, and he ended up with the photo below. He tweeted it, and it got a bit of attention pretty quickly. It didn't take long for NASA to take note, though. Below Trevor's tweet, you'll see that the International Space Station sent it out, too, and everyone ate it up. It's pretty easy to see why.

The space station is the long white streak that bows above the plane's wing. This picture wasn't taken like most — generally, you see something, so you snap a picture. This photo took some planning. When Trevor was seated on the right side of the plane, a revelation hit him:

"Upon taking my seat on the right side of the plane, the future astronaut in me thought, 'Hey, what if the ISS is going to pass over me while I am flying?' I usually take gate-to-gate time-lapses on my flights to wherever I go, but I figured that a shot at capturing the ISS from the plane was reason enough to cancel this time-lapse. [It has] never been done before other than by NASA."

So, he hopped on his computer, and sure enough, the ISS was scheduled to be making a fly-by. On Trevor's trip from New York to Chicago, he took a series of 30-second exposure shots, and then merged them to create the image below.
What do you think of Trevor's shot? Let us know in the comments below, and be sure to share it with your friends on Facebook!

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