Pyramids and Cairo in big

ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet spent six months on the International Space Station as part of his second mission Alpha in 2021. In his free time, like many astronauts, he enjoyed looking out of the Cupola windows at Earth.

This collage of pictures shows El Cairo, the capital of Egypt, and the Pyramids of Giza made from many pictures mapped together, digitally rotated and assembled into this large collage. 

On the occasion of the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum, Thomas shared on his social media: 

"Tell me you've been to space without telling me you've been to space: here's my photo of the Pyramids of Giza. One of astronauts' all-time favourite targets finally ended up in my camera's frame back in 2021, not so easy to spot from 400 km up!

At the time, the Grand Egyptian Museum wasn't visible yet on the satellite maps, it's now standing proudly near the pyramids. His futuristic 47-hectare complex (about the size of 65 soccer fields!!) will display over 100 000 artefacts spanning 5000 years of history. Among them are the 5644 treasures of Tutankhamun's tomb, shown together for the first time. Built on shifting desert ground after two decades of work, the museum itself has become a monument to human ingenuity."