The photograph taken on June 30, 2018 by astronaut Alexander Gerst from the ISS shows the Moon and Mars in the most approximate form during the 6-month mission Horizons. To illustrate, Mars was singled out and increased by 20 times. The radius of the Red Planet is 3389 km, but at that time it was located at a distance of 67 million km from the Earth. The moon (radius - 1737 km) was at a distance of 411,000 km.
The distance from Mars to Earth varies, as both planets revolve around the sun. The red planet is closer these weeks and becomes brighter than Jupiter in the night sky. On July 27, you can admire another spectacle, when the Earth casts its shadow on the Moon and makes it fill with a seeming red color. With careful planning, you can see Mars and the red moon from the ISS, as the station moves from west to east. The ISS, the Moon and Mars are considered to be the strategic human and robotic goals of ESA, using low earth orbit to research and demonstrate technologies, develop a service module and send robotic probes to Mars that will turn 2 meters on the surface in search of life.
Alexander Gerst used a camera with a 210-millimeter lens and captured this view in his spare time from experiments. The flight of the station at 28,000 km takes only 90 minutes to fly around the Earth.
