Earth is a big place. And over the past several millennia, humans have filled it with big, magnificent things, such as massive pyramids, giant walls, sprawling cities, and much more. But to the International Space Station (ISS), which is hurtling through space about 250 miles above the surface of Earth, our big planet can look kind of small. Even some of our biggest constructions can get swallowed up in the swirls of blue, white, and green that characterizes our planet.
There are some structures that, even 250 miles away, are visible from ISS. It’s a whole different world when you go up into space and see just how little our planet actually is. Yet it is filled with numerous wonders created by both humans and nature, and horrors we’d rather ignore because they would give us nightmares. When you go up so high you get to see things in a new perspective.
You might not see the bugs, birds, people, and animals, but you see each and every forest fire, oil spill, and man-made marvel on the planet and nothing is too small or irrelevant. We are leaving behind as much devastation as we are creating beauty in this world. It’s time to look at our legacy! Here are mind-bending structures that can be seen only from space. The Great Wall of China is definitely not the most visible man-made structure from space, but there are plenty you can observe with an untrained eye if you happen to be on a space station.
The Palm Island in Dubai is like a vision from a futuristic movie. Who could have thought humanity would be creating whole islands? It certainly does look stunning from up above.
Behold the Udachny mine in Russia famous for its diamond deposits back in the day. It stopped operating in 2015, but now the owners are planning to go deep underground to create another mine in the same place.
Many of you are probably familiar with this image of Pentagon – a star edged into the surface of the Earth.
The potassium chloride evaporation ponds located in Utah look especially surreal when observed from space. Different colouring happens due to various stages of solar evaporation of the ponds.
Plantation fields near the capital of Brazil look like a beautiful abstract painting. It is said that fields are created round-shaped for an easier irrigation process.
When it comes to man-made objects visible from space it’s hard to top this oasis created in the midst of the desert. This is a small village named Huacachina located in the southern part of Peru.
This is what the Great Wall of China actually looks like from space. While it is definitely visible, I must admit it is not the most striking structure left by humans that you can observe from high up above.
The Kohnen Search Station located deep in the barren lands of Antarctica caused a massive panic attack on the Internet not so long ago. People were wondering what that mysterious structure was doing there in the middle of nowhere.
The Great Pyramids of Giza: Over to Egypt you will see a pair of small triangular shadows at the center. The shadows, and the small speck right below them, are actually some of the most mind-blowing constructions ever built by humans. They are three of the most well-known ancient Egyptian pyramids: the Pyramids of Giza. The largest of the three is nearly 500 feet tall, but from space it just looks like a tiny smudge in the Egyptian desert.