By Jonathan Chadwick for Mailonline
June 18, 2024 at 11:39 am, updated June 18, 2024 at 11:41 am
The aurora borealis – a stunning display of natural light – is mostly only seen from Earth.
But lucky astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) got a unique view of the spectacle – with Earth in the background.
Amazing video shows a brilliant green stream of subtle light covering thousands of miles across our planet.
In the foreground is Boeing’s conical Starliner capsule, which was originally supposed to return to Earth.
The clip was shot by NASA’s Matthew Dominick aboard the ISS, which orbits Earth at an altitude of about 250 miles above sea level.
Dominick has been aboard the ISS since early March when he took a trip aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft.
Astronauts on the ISS have their own personal Internet connection, which means they can post on X, send emails, and more.
Taking to X to post the video and image, Dominick said: “We’ve been looking at the aurora from the dome windows a lot lately.
“The timing was perfect for the aurora to line up nicely with the Starliner’s service module jets.”
The aurora is caused by disturbances in the Earth’s magnetosphere due to the flow of particles from the Sun and is usually centered around the Earth’s magnetic poles – hence known as the northern or southern lights.
Charged particles are ejected from the Sun at top speed before interacting with Earth’s magnetic field.
Although the aurora is green in this video, its color appearance depends in part on which molecules the charged particles interact with.
Red and green colors tend to be characteristic of oxygen, pink and red of nitrogen, and blue and violet are the result of hydrogen and helium.
Although it is unclear from the clip exactly where the ISS was at the time, we do know that the ISS follows a circular path around our planet.
Click here to resize this module
In the video, we can also see the Starliner’s small square window dramatically illuminated by brilliant flashes of bright light.
These flashlights are operated by fellow NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who embarked on a trip to the ISS aboard the Starliner on June 5 and arrived the following day.
Wilmore and Williams were only supposed to stay on the ISS for a week, but ongoing issues with the Starliner mean they can’t return home just yet and have to stay longer than planned.
Officials discovered five different leaks in the Starliner’s propulsion system, which would navigate the craft through space on its return to Earth.
NASA says Starliner will now return to Earth on Saturday, June 22 at the earliest — more than a week later than originally planned.
“The additional time allows the team to complete departure planning and operations while the spacecraft remains cleared within flight rules for emergency crew return scenarios,” NASA and Boeing said in a statement.
Boeing is one of three companies participating in NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, an initiative to fly teams of astronauts to the ISS on behalf of the space agency.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX, the program’s most successful member to date, made its first manned launch to the ISS back in May 2020 using its Crew Dragon spacecraft.
It has completed nine crewed launches in total – and will make several more as part of the program – while rival Boeing lags behind.
The first launch with a Boeing crew was originally planned for 2017, but various delays pushed the launch of the mission several times.