NASA astronaut Zena Cardman has shared some striking photos showing a Russian cosmonaut during a spacewalk.
One of the images (above) shows Alexey Zubritsky performing what is a mundane task on Earth but something altogether more challenging when you’re orbiting Earth 250 miles up: window cleaning.
“Caught Alexey Zubritsky, on one of his recent spacewalks, through the window of his own sleeping quarters,” Cardman wrote in a post on X. “After installing a semiconductor experiment with Sergey Ryzhikov, Alexey had the task of wiping off the outside of his window.
“I loved the juxtaposition of something so hugely sublime as a spacewalk with something so relatable as cleaning a hazy window that you’ve been looking through for months.”
Cardman described Zubritsky worksite around the window as a “difficult” one, with “not much to hold on to, but Alexey is a natural at spacewalking.”
She added: “Totally surreal to be right there, inches from our friend.”
The photos were taken by Cardman at the end of October but shared only in the last few days due the U.S. government shutdown over the last month, which saw NASA pausing communications across its social media platforms.
The American astronaut arrived at the space station in August and is set to return to Earth in the first half of next year.
During her time aboard the orbital outpost, and up until the shutdown started, Cardman has been sharing various images and videos of her experiences in space.
In August, a few weeks after her arrival, the astronaut posted a video of a SpaceX cargo spacecraft docking with the ISS high above Earth.
Cardman also shared a video of a dramatic moonset, which shows our nearest neighbor appearing to become weirdly distorted due to the effects of Earth’s atmosphere.
A moonset viewed from the station occurs when the moon appears to move below the horizon of the Earth. Unlike on Earth’s surface, the ISS orbits the Earth about every 90 minutes, so the moon can seem to set very quickly from an astronaut’s perspective.
