This south-facing image of a much larger Aral Sea was taken by an astronaut on the Space Shuttle Challenger (carrying ESA's Spacelab) in August 1985. See how Vozrozhdeniye Island - once the site of biowarfare experiments - was then still very much cut off from the mainland. Space images have traced the Aral Sea's rapid decline during the past two decades, right up to the latest July 2003 MERIS image, in which half the former lakebed is now dry salty desert and the remaining waters have divided.