Commander Scott Kelly is halfway through his year in space today. While his body is slowly degrading into a mess of bulging eyeballs and atrophied muscles, his artistic sensibilities are being kept in shape with an endless array of gorgeous settings to photograph for our vicarious viewing pleasure.
April 5, 2015: The Easter Bunny visits the space station. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
April 15, 2015: “Sometimes the world seems to shimmer.” Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
April 22, 2015: 262,000 solar cells lace the wings of the solar arrays to power the International Space Station. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
April 27, 2015: “Sometimes Earth looks like another planet.” Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
May 8, 2015: A single ridge splits the landscape and casts a deep shadow, evidence of a torn planet and a traumatic past. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
May 19, 2015: Branching rivers and tributaries split like fractals. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
May 22, 2015: Sandbars and islands in shallow water. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
May 24, 2015: Honolulu, Hawaii. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
May 28, 2015: Rearranging the PMM to a new port on Node 3 blocked this window, making it unlikely anyone will use it for photography again. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
June 9, 2015: Green fields tile Southeast Asia. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
June 14, 2015: Rain brings a flush of green to the African desert. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
June 18, 2015: Strips of sand and shadow transform the desert into a complex tapestry of texture. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
June 22, 2015: Abandoned scrolls from meandering rivers tangle the land into a mess of exposed rock and sediment. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
June 25, 2015: Bare rock scoured by wind, cut by ephemeral rivers, and sliced by roads. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
June 27, 2015: Thick dunes of the African desert see from 400 kilometers (250 miles) above the sands. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
June 27, 2015: A hint of red and green aurora tint the planet while the International Space Station’s solar panels dominate the foreground. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
July 2, 2015: “Day 97. Good night, Moon.” Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
July 6, 2015: As brine evaporates, it leaves behind distinctive rings of evaporite minerals like halite, borax, gypsum, and sylvite. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
July 9, 2015: “Earth without art is just Eh.” Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
July 10, 2015: The Eye of the Sahara is always gorgeous. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
July 12, 2015: Athens, Greece. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
July 13, 2015: Early morning aurora in green and red. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
July 17, 2015: Gorgeous Earth tones of sediment-laden rivers rimmed with bright reflective evaporate deposits. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
July 19, 2015: The cays of the Bahamas. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
July 19, 2015: The Earth, Venus, Jupiter, and the Moon. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
July 22, 2015: Red sands in the African desert with nobs of bedrock. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
July 25, 2015: Night over Japan, with the Soyuz spacecraft connected to the Mini Research Module 1 (MRM1) and a Progress cargo tug visible in the foreground. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
July 28, 2015: Glaciers and peaks in the Andes Mountains. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
July 29, 2015: Star dunes reflect complex shifting winds in a desert of thick sand. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
August 1, 2015: Linear dunes in a thinly-mantled desert. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
August 1, 2015: A perfect sunset on Day 127. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
August 2, 2015: Seasonal streams erode mountains into bajada, fans on the desert floor below. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
August 3, 2015: Rain brings bright green to the Australian outback. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
August 4, 2015: “The thing about abstract art: it appears not of this world. The thing about Earth art: it is our world.” Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
August 4, 2015: Concentrated waterflow carving the tip off an island. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
August 6, 2015: A small island in Southeast Asia. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
August 9, 2015: The Milky Way in all its dusty, gassy warped beauty. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
August 10, 2015: The western United States at night with city glow (yellow-orange) and scattered lightning in thunderstorms (white-blue). Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
August 12, 2015: The Perseid meteor shower seen from the International Space Station on a moonless night. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
August 15, 2015: Aurora coating the planet in glowing pink and green. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
August 17, 2015: Snow on Kilimanjaro. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
August 25, 2015: Scott Kelly in a zero-g selfie, juggling fresh fruits he’d helped unload from the HTV5 cargo run to the space station. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
August 27, 2015: “Is it teal, turquoise, blue-green, aqua or seafoam?” Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
August 28, 2015: Purple glowing Aurora on Night 154 of the Year in Space. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
August 31, 2015: The human impact on Earth can still make fantastic art. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
September 3, 2015: “Sometimes it’s good when things get in your way.” Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
September 4, 2015: Names don’t need to make sense: this very blue body of water is the Red Sea in Greek and the Green Space in Egyptian. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
September 5, 2015: The Earth at night with the Moon, airglow, and city lights providing diffuse glow. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
September 6, 2015: Sediment tints rivers to a rich, deep orange. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
September 8, 2015: “Since we don’t have much green up here, the green of this desert is even more appealing.” Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
Check out more in the NASA/Scott Kelly highlight gallery here, and follow along with @StationCDRKelly.
Top image: September 5, 2015: Evaporation ponds along the Spanish coastline. Credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
Contact the author at mika.mckinnon@io9.com or follow her at @MikaMcKinnon.