30.03.2022

"I feel like I just made a once-in-a-lifetime image."

Astrophotographer Sebastian Voltmer captured this photo of spacewalking astronaut Matthias Maurer on March 23, 2022. Voltmer used a telescope to take the image from the ground — from Maurer’s home tome of Sankt Wendel, Germany.  (Image credit: @SeVoSpace/Dr. Sebastian Voltmer/www.apollo-13.eu)

Here's a spacewalk as you've probably never seen one before. 

Last Wednesday (March 23), NASA astronaut Raja Chari and the European Space Agency's Matthias Maurer spent nearly seven hours outside the International Space Station, performing a variety of maintenance work.  

Amazingly, astrophotographer Sebastian Voltmer managed to capture a snapshot of the spacewalk action from the ground — and from Maurer's hometown of Sankt Wendel, Germany, no less.

"Yesterday I witnessed the #spacewalk shortly after sunset. Here comes a first photo. #ESA #astronaut Matthias Maurer was just 'climbing' at this moment. The rod-shaped structure (Canadarm2) is the robot arm. Greetings from Matthias Maurer's hometown — it was very exciting. #iss," Voltmer tweeted on Thursday(March 24). 

Maurer is actually visible in the International Space Station image, as Voltmer notes in the annotated image he posted on Twitter along with the above description. And so is Chari, Voltmer added in a Sunday tweet, which he published after taking a bit more time to analyze the photo with the help of photographer Phillip Smith.