Joshua Kutryk is the mission specialist for SpaceX Crew-13 and will spend around six months on the International Space Station.
While Google Earth offers one version of Vancouver from space, Canadian astronaut Joshua Kutryk has shared another perspective.
Raised on a cattle farm in eastern Alberta, Kutryk went on to become a test pilot, rise to the rank of colonel in the Canadian air force and earn three master’s degrees.
Now he’s the mission specialist for SpaceX Crew-13 and will spend around six months on the International Space Station (ISS) as part of Expedition 75.
Alongside the experiments and space station duties, he’s also acting as an ambassador for Canadians interested in space, as it’s the first time a Canadian Space Agency astronaut has been on the ISS since 2019 (and fourth overall).
It’s also the first time a Canadian has been part of a SpaceX Crew.
Kutryk has only been in space a few days, entering the space station on Oct. 1. On Tuesday (Oct. 13), CSA held a press conference with him, and later in the day he shared a photo of a piece of Canada he passed over: Vancouver.
On Facebook, the City of Vancouver account responded.
“Hello up there!” reads the comment.
What does Vancouver look like from the International Space Station?
Luckily for Kutryk, the sky over Metro Vancouver was clear for the photo, which shows the region from the west, with the west at the bottom of the photo.
While houses and towers are hard to make out in the image, some buildings are easy to spot.
The easiest structure to see is BC Place, a bright white spot near the middle of the image. Canada Place is also visible, as a white shape jutting out into the blue of the Burrard Inlet.
Other things that can be spotted relatively easily are the ski runs on the North Shore Mountain, the Vancouver International Airport (the image helps show the scale of YVR), Kingsway and the Second Narrows Bridge.