El Paso, Texas

High-resolution image (536 Kb)

This international image of the El Paso-Juárez area on the U.S.-Mexico border is the 100,000th photograph of Earth that astronauts have taken from the International Space Station. It was taken on Jan. 26, 2004, by the Expedition 8 crew.

The Rio Grande River can be seen meandering through the area, forming the boundary between the sister cities of El Paso, Texas, and Juárez, Chihuahua. North is to the right in this image, and the setting sun has cast the east side of the Sierra Juárez and Franklin Mountains into shadow.

Photographs of Earth are a concrete way for astronauts to share their observations and experience in orbit with the public. Scientists integrate them with a variety of other remote sensing data in their Earth science research. The record of astronaut photography of Earth starts more than 40 years ago with the first human space flights and represents the longest continuous record of the state of the planet as observed from orbit.

Astronaut photograph ISS008-E-13212 was provided by the Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Laboratory at Johnson Space Center. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.