July 2, 2001

Earlier this week, DCist posted a photo of our region at night taken from 230 miles above the surface of the Earth. The image, snapped by the International Space Station’s current commander, Chris Hadfield, was immensely popular, and with good reason.

Anyway, we got curious and poked around to see if NASA has any other photos of our area taken by astronauts manning space shuttles and spacecraft over the years. We found plenty, so here are a bunch more photos of D.C. from space.

Even from high above, the District of Columbia casts a distinct shape, from the right angles that form its borders with Maryland, to the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers. Other D.C. landmarks, including its many traffic circles, are also clearly visible. Many of the photos also include Robert F. Kennedy Stadium, seen as a thick, white ring close to a bridge spanning the Anacostia.

NASA keeps a running archive of the photographs taken of the Earth by crew members of its manned space missions. Though the selected images were all taken from the International Space Station over the past 13 years, the records go as far back as the early years of the Space Shuttle program.