Euro-French spacecraft pilot for European Space Agency (ESA), Thomas Pesquet recently captured the red heart of Australia from the International Space Station (ISS) approx. 400km above ground.
Pesquet's Facebook post said,
And his Twitter post translates to English as,
'The sacred site of Uluru, in the heart of the Australian outback stands out clearly from its surroundings in the setting sun.'
Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park told NITV that while Uluru has been captured from space before (in 2015, by satellite rather than a photographer and camera), they are very impressed with Pesquet's work as it doesn't incorporate surrounding sacred sites as other photographs have in the past.
"It's amazing and done beautifully," a representative of the park said.
The park are pleased the photograph has done significantly well on social media, reaching 100K likes on Facebook and nearly 15, 000 shares.
Pesquet wrote that Uluru is not easy to spot from ISS, but given that this was at sunset, he was able to see one of Australia's natural treasures and to capture an image of it - something he has wanted to do for a long time. A keen photographer, Pesquet also shared his image on photography-sharing site, Flickr, noting his equipment was a simple Nikon D4 camera, 600mm f/4 using no flash.
The astronaut is known for his space photography, having recently shared (very) aerial views of Honolulu, Warsaw and Athens with his many social media followers.
