The crazy weather and health risks prevent most people from even thinking about climbing Mt. Everest. The few who have climbed the great peak find that while the 29,035-foot Everest definitely stands out, it does not look nearly as tall or impressive from 250 miles above the planet.
Yuri Malenchenko, a Russian cosmonaut, took the very rare photo (above) last month. So why is it so difficult to get a picture of Mt. Everest? U.S. astronaut and former Space Station resident Ron Garan, who tried many times to get a good shot explains,
"The answer is quite simple, all the photos we take from space are taken in the crew's own personal time. No time is allotted in our work day normally for Earth pictures. So if we want to capture a specific point on the ground we have to first know exactly when we will fly over that spot, second be available to grab a camera and get to a window, and third have the weather and proper sun angles to get a great shot. Over the course of my six months in space I was never able to get all three of those to align for Mt. Everest."
Pictures looking up at Mt. Everest are also hard to take, because even if you were able to make the trek to just below the peak, the weather is almost always brutal up there, and can prevent a good picture from being taken. Mt. Everest often creates its own weather, so regardless of what the forecast might be around the mountain, it could be entirely different near the top.
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