Tim Peake tweets to us from space
Tim Peake tweets to us from space https://asteroidday-uploads.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/04055127/tim-peake-pic.jpg 2048 1465 Asteroid Day https://asteroidday-uploads.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/04055127/tim-peake-pic.jpg
Exciting news! The British astronaut Tim Peake has Tweeted a photograph he took from the International Space Station of the Yucatan Peninsula – on my suggestion – while the scientific drilling is taking place. This would have required quite a bit of planning, for the ISS to pass over, and when Tim had some free time. He really scored a bullseye with the impact site smack in the middle of the picture – and the drilling platform 30 km offshore. You can really imagine an asteroid coming in from space in that picture, and creating a 180 km crater — which would be a big chunk of the peninsula.
66 million years ago a 14km wide asteroid hit this part of #Mexico & wiped out the dinosaurs @AsteroidDay #Chicxulub pic.twitter.com/nm0dh3eODA
— Tim Peake (@astro_timpeake) May 9, 2016
As part of my work for the UK Space Agency, I have been photographing Tim for the past few years — training in Germany and Russia, and also for his visits to the UK. While Tim has been on the ISS I have been giving him general in-orbit photography training for his mission. Specifically I have suggested he photographs impact craters on the Earth, and I provided him with a list of those targets, with the help of Asteroid Day team members Alan Fitzsimmons and Mark Boslough, including the Yucatan Peninsula. This is part of the close relationship that Asteroid Day has with the European Space Agency, and their work with asteroids.
Happy days!
