Photo of SpaceX’s private Polaris Dawn capsule re-entering from the ISS

SCIENCE: Amazing photos of Polaris Dawn’s nighttime re-entry have been sent back to Earth from space. NASA astronaut Don Pettit captured the eve-of-the-night end of Polaris while returning to Earth aboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft on Sunday (Sept. 15). It was the first private space mission to take place in commercial space. “The original conical shape of the Dragon capsule is visible except for the colorful trail over Florida,” Pettit wrote on SpaceX (formerly Twitter) about the photo taken from the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday afternoon. Pettit, who launched on his fourth space mission to the International Space Station on Sept. 11, is known for his dramatic photos of star trails and other space phenomena in orbit. He obtained the images from the dome, a curved window on the International Space Station that faces toward Earth.

“We have new lenses in orbit that are optimized for nighttime photography, and we’re really looking forward to returning to the station and shooting at night,” Pettit said in a pre-launch interview with Space.com. This is taking it to a whole new level.” As fellow NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick told X, the rest of his crew was excited to see Petty back at work. “Many of us gathered in the dome this morning to watch Polaris Dawn return to Earth. It was a joy to see this picture of us surrounded by five human bodies trapped in the dome,” Dominick said. “That’s it.”