Amazing Video: Watch SpaceX's Dragon in Flight, as Seen From the Ground

By Nancy Atkinson - June 8, 2017 at 10:08 AM UTC | Space Exploration
Legault-screenshot.jpg

Always on the lookout for interesting events in the skies, astrophotographer

Thierry Legault

has captured an incredible video of SpaceX's Dragon capsule traveling through space just 20 minutes after it launched from Kennedy Space Center on June 3, 2017.

"You can see the Dragon, the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket, and solar panel covers," Legault told Universe Today via email, "plus a nice surprise I discovered during processing: several fast ejections of material, certainly thrusters firing!"

Legault captured at least 6 ejections of material during the passage over his location in Tours, France. The three brightest are highlighted at the end of this video. He used a Sony Alpha 7S with a 200mm lens.

So, what you're seeing is the Dragon traveling through the background of stars. Legault hand-tracked the Dragon, so even though it appears as stationary (with a few bumps here and there) and objects are zooming past, the capsule is in fact moving at close to 17,500 mph (28,000 km/h). This was taken a just few minutes after the capsule separated from the Falcon nine upper stage and jettisoned the covers on the solar panels, so all the individual bright 'dots' seen here were still near each other, moving together in Earth orbit.

SpaceX CRS-11 filmed from France 20min after launch: https://t.co/fwpp0iwcUvDragon, stage 2, solar panel covers plus material ejections! pic.twitter.com/mveRocGGII — Thierry Legault (@ThierryLegault)

This Dragon is now docked at the International Space Station, as the launch was the CRS-11 (11 of 12 planned Commercial Resupply Services for SpaceX.) This was the first time that a Dragon spacecraft was reused, and it brought supplies and science experiments to the ISS. As SpaceX has now done several times, the first stage booster landed back at KSC. This was also the 100th launch from historic pad 39A.

Read more about the launch and mission here.

This isn't the first time Legault has captured the Dragon in flight; he also shot footage of Dragon on its way to the ISS in

April of 2014

. Recently, he also was able to take multiple images of the ISS passing in front of the Moon:

[caption id="attachment_135963" align="aligncenter" width="580"]

Lunar transit of the ISS

Expedition 50 with French astronaut Thomas Pesquet on February 4, 2017. Filmed with Celestron C14 EdgeHD and Sony Alpha 7S from Rouen, France (Pesquet's birth city). Credit and copyright: Thierry Legault. Used by permission. [/caption]

Thanks to Thierry for sharing his footage and images with Universe Today. Keep track of his amazing work at

his website

.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com