(Don Pettit/ISS via SWNS)
By Dean Murray
Jaw-dropping scenes show a “train” of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites in orbit – along with an impressive aurora.
NASA astronaut Don Pettit captured the spectacle from 257 miles up on the International Space Station (ISS).
Sharing footage from his recent time on the orbiting platform, he commented on Tuesday (Oct 7): “My best sighting of a Starlink satellite ‘train’ from orbit!”
Posting on X (formerly Twitter), his son A. Pettit called it a “contender for one of the coolest videos from space”, and wrote: “Nothing visualizes how omnipresently SURROUNDED by satellites we are better than this video.”
He added: “And this is only the ones that are visible in a tiny fraction of the Earth’s limb.”
Starlink is the world’s first and largest satellite constellation using a low Earth orbit to deliver broadband internet capable of supporting streaming, online gaming, video calls and more.
As of early October 2025, there are nearly 10,000 Starlink satellites launched into orbit, with SpaceX continuing to deploy them at a rapid pace, maintaining the world’s largest satellite internet constellation in low Earth orbit.
Don Pettit returned to Earth on April 19 after spending 220 days aboard the Space Station.
(Don Pettit/ISS via SWNS)