Timelapse video made during ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet’s second mission to the International Space Station, “Alpha”. The camera is setup to take pictures at intervals of two a second, and the pictures are then edited into this video that plays at 25 pictures a second. The video is around 12 times faster than real speed.

Thomas shared this video on social media with the caption: “Soyuz docked without moving over a night-time Europe. It is a juxtaposition how in space everything seems calm and immobile while we are traveling at 28 800 km/h. Oleg, Mark and Pyotr's Soyuz MS-18 "Yuri Gagarin" in the foreground flying over a night view of Earth. A nice tribute to the first person to orbit our planet – 60 years ago. 50 years ago today was also the only deaths of Soyuz in its long history of its use. Spaceflight is not without risk and the crew of Soyuz 11 sadly depressurised before a return to Earth, Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev are the only humans to have lost their lives in a Soyuz.“

Over 200 experiments are planned during Thomas’ time in space, with 40 European ones and 12 new experiments led by the French space agency @CNES.

Follow Thomas: http://bit.ly/ThomasPesquetBlog Credits: directed by Thomas Pesquet, edited by Melanie Cowan.