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Google has added Street View images to a great number of unusual places on Earth from historical sites to remote islands. Now, information technology's getting Street View data for a place where there are no streets — the International Space Station. With the help of the station's coiffure, Google has rolled out an interactive version of the station in Google Maps, which y'all can explore right now.

Getting Street View data for the ISS proved to be more of a claiming than the squad had originally expected. On Earth, Street View images are captured by a car with a 360-degree photographic camera mounted to the roof. In places where cars can't go, Google has a backpack rig with a similar 360-caste photographic camera poking upwardly from the top. There are no 360-degree cameras on the ISS, and Google's backpack is too bulky to be effective in the bars space even if it went for the expense of sending one up on a resupply mission.

Information technology was decided the crew of the ISS could simply use the DSLR photographic camera already on-board. By snapping multiple photos, Google could run up them together into a 360-caste image. The next consequence Google had to contend with is a lack of up and down in space. If the photos aren't taken in roughly the aforementioned orientation, you end up with weird artifacts and seams where the images come across up.

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Google's Street View team worked with NASA's Johnson Space Heart and Marshall Space Flight Heart to effigy out a method for taking the necessary photos in a weightless environment. They came upwardly with a technique involving bungee cords, which were stretched across each section of the station to create a vertical and horizontal aeroplane. The crew could and so rotate the camera around the fundamental indicate where the cords crossed.

The results of this endeavor are available online in Google Maps right now. It's featured on the Street View landing folio, but you lot tin can't simply search for the International Infinite Station in Google Maps. The images cover near of the station'southward areas, including the Destiny Lab Module, Tranquillity Module, cargo blocks, and even the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM). There are numerous points of interest in each surface area, which you can click on to become additional data.

When y'all're there, the station works merely like a Street View environment on Earth. You lot can click on the "ground" to advance through the corridors, and pan around to meet all the cool stuff. Go along in heed, the things you're looking for might be directly above or below you — gotta brand use of all available surfaces in space.

At present read: The 25 All-time Hubble Space Telescope Images