I have recently been reminded how human spaceflight can capture the imagination. This weekend I have been setting up Twitter lists (here, for starters) to help me find engineering teaching resources – and stumbled upon this low-light video footage of the earth’s surface taken from the International Space Station. If there ever was anything to get young people into science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM), then space travel must be it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDEmtWLwMOM]

Seeing this reminded of a really moving compilation of space shuttle footage that did the rounds in July, and which the editor Charlotte Stoddart showed at the first Science Showoff back in October. If you haven’t seen it before, sit back and enjoy.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II7QBLt36xo&feature=player_embedded]

I really like this quote from the Guardian article about this footage:

Nasa, an organisation that has put men on the moon, kept their video archive on VHS. One of my editors described this as “humankind’s greatest achievement recorded on the world’s lousiest format”.