The Sally Ride EarthKAM is a camera set up on the International Space Station (ISS) to image the surface of the earth through a station window. What images the camera captures is controlled by students at middle schools in many different countries.

Last week, astronauts on the ISS installed and activated the camera: ISS Daily Summary Report – 3/30/2017 | ISS On-Orbit Status Report –

Sally Ride Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle Schools (EarthKAM): This morning the crew successfully installed and activated the EarthKAM payload in the Node 2 nadir hatch window. Science operations using the EarthKAM setup will begin next week, marking the beginning of the 57th EarthKAM mission.

This session includes over 200 schools in more than 50 countries around the world and is scheduled to last through April 9. This is a NASA education program that enables thousands of students to photograph and examine Earth from a space crew’s perspective.

Using the Internet, the students control a special digital camera mounted on-board the ISS. This enables them to photograph the Earth’s coastlines, mountain ranges and other geographic items of interest from the unique vantage point of space.

The team at Sally Ride EarthKAM then posts these photographs on the Internet for the public and participating classrooms around the world to view.

Check out the image gallery for the latest Mission. Some samples:

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