Visiting International Space Station on Google Street View

Years ago, Google introduced Google Earth and Google Maps. Google Earth allowed people to navigate Earth while sitting on their computer while Google Maps helped them to get directions for planned destinations. Now an advanced tool called Google Street View is coming, incorporated with various features of Google Earth and Google Maps.

Earlier, due to Google Earth, there were concerns about security raised by various governments around the world, especially India that Google Earth will help terrorists do the recce of a place without actually visiting that place and plan a terror attack. Politicians wished for Google to blur and censor the locations of importance. However, people were excited to use Google Earth the buzz around it kept it a hot topic for a long time.

Google Maps also helped people to plan a route to every place that they wanted to travel.

With so much buzz as well as the fuss over the first version of Google Earth, imagine the buzz that the new and advanced Street View would create.

What Google Street View does?

Google has Street View images to various unusual places on Earth from historical sites to remote islands. Using Street View, Google is getting Street View data for a place where there are no streets. This place is International Space Station. With some help from station’s crew, Google has inaugurated an interactive version of the station in Google Maps.

How does Google Street View work?

Getting Street View data for the International Space Station (ISS) turned out to be a bigger challenge than what the team had earlier anticipated. On Earth, a car with 360-degree camera mounted to the roof captures Street View images. If car cannot cover a particular place, Google’s backpack rig with a similar 360-degree camera poking up from the top swings into action. However, ISS does not have 360-degree cameras and Google’s backpack is too heavy and bulky to be effective in the confined space.

Google released the results of this endeavor online at Google Maps right now, featuring them on Street View landing page. However, users cannot search for ISS on Google Maps. Images cover many areas of station including Tranquility Module, Destiny Lab Module, cargo blocks, and Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM).

Did you enjoy the view of ISS via Google Street view? Share your comments with us.

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