Behold the mesmerizing mundanity of space!

NASA has transformed the external camera on the International Space Station into a live webcam — and the view is fascinatingly dull.

For its inaugural morning, the webcam showed a live space walk by US Commander Mike Fincke and Russian flight engineer Yury Lonchakov complete with commentary from an announcer (”That’s Fincke in the red stripes”). We’re sure that being on a spacewalk is exciting. Watching one, though, is a bit like staring at the IT guy crawling around under your desk trying to find the right power cord.

That said, if you’re a lover of space, the webcam is awesome. Being able to watch the boring stuff actually teaches us an important lesson about the final frontier: space isn’t all ray-guns and warp drives. It’s grueling, precision work; keeping anything up there is really, really hard.

Keep an eye on the camera, too, for views of Earth. NASA promises that when the crew doesn’t need the the camera, it’ll be turned on the blue planet.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Related posts:

1. First Animals Found That Live Without Oxygen In the muck of the deep Mediterranean seafloor, scientists...
2. NASA Brings the Dark Side of the Sun to Your iPhone As the sun reawakens from an anomalously quiet period,...
3. Hubble Spots First Potential Asteroid Collision The X marks the spot of a suspected head-on...
4. Teenager’s 60ft painting of penis on parents’ roof spotted in space A house, near Hungerford, has had a penis painted...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.