Astronaut Soichi Noguchi has already made his name as a prolific Twitterer, who delights his 125,000 followers with live pictures from the International Space Station.
- Now the Japanese engineer has gone one better, posting stunning footage of Earth and the Moon on his own YouTube channel.
- This morning he posted a two-minute video of the Earth filmed from the window of the new observation deck on the orbiter.
- 'Welcome to the journey over Madagascar! Enjoy the out-of-the-world view,' he wrote.
- The outline of the world's fourth largest island is clearly visible under patchy cloud, as the space station zooms at 17,500MPH over head.
- A week ago he unveiled a beautiful one minute showing the Moon slowly setting into the horizon.
- The 44-year-old has been orbiting 200miles above our planet since December 2009 and is due to come back this June. His last ISS mission was in 2005.
- Mr Noguchi was taking advantage of the Italian-made cupola installed on the new Tranquility module last month. The £17million observation deck has one central window and six outer windows, which give panoramic views.
- It is used by crew members to operate the robotic arms on the station as well as monitor the approach of supply ships.
- Major construction on the £60billion orbital outpost is complete and Nasa has only four more shuttle missions planned to ferry spare parts and supplies to the station, a project of 16 nations that has been under construction since 1998.
- The micro-blogging service seems particularly suited to the busy astronauts, who can use it to describe their daily routines in just 140 characters.
- The first live Twitter post was sent by astronaut Timothy Creamer on January 25th, after the space station finally went online this year.
- Before this astronauts would send Twitter updates through to Houston Mission Control who would then post on their behalf.
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