The latest issue of Sky and Telescope mentioned NASA's ISS HD Earth Viewing Experiment. Cameras on the ISS provide a constant view of the earth below.

This can be seen online here. I've looked at it occasionally the past few days and have seen some spectacular vistas - especially when the station is passing from day into night or vice versa.

Often there is just a bunch of blue (the oceans) and white (clouds), and the station is in darkness about half the time so there's not much to see then.

It can be hard to determine exactly what is in view, so I've paired it up with the front page of http://www.heavens-above.com , which shows the location of the ISS (refresh the page to update the location). The two together give a good idea of exactly what is being shown below.

I've tried looking for city lights and the auroral oval, but so far without success.

I got the opportunity last week to go hear Fred Haise speak at Space Center Houston. It's a free talk that they do once a month apparently with different speakers. He talked a lot about things other than just Apollo 13. They tried a new question system where you e-mail it in and I got to ask him what was one of his favorite topics to study while prepping for missions and he said Geology. It wasn't something they taught in school so it gave him a lot to learn and think about.

I'd forgotten he was from Biloxi, Mississippi.

If Elon Musk walked up to me and offered me a one way ticket to Mars, I'd say yes in a heartbeat. No questions asked. I'm going to die one day, might as well do it as one of the first humans to step foot on an alien world. Seriously though, this period in history is so boring. I reckon that if you had told JFK that we would meet his decade deadline, then return to the moon a total of six times between '69 and '72 and then never return for nearly fifty years, he might have called you insane. But here we are in 2019, regressed so far that the United States doesn't even have the capability to send our own astronauts to the ISS. It's almost depressing how slowely we've progressed. I just hope I get to witness that mars landing before I die

I don't even like traveling by plane, I doubt a spaceship would be much better. But of course with those companies offering flights to the moon if you have enough money, space travel might be the next 'fad' and once it became more affordable, it could really take off, pun intended

Edited addition: Even thought The Jetsons lied to us(life was supposed to be like that now, wasn't it?), if there was a new habitable planet that was going to be colonized, I'd like to sign up for that, being able to homestead on an unspoiled world would more than make up for the hassle in getting there.

We were out back burning brush, and, as usual, I was looking up at the night sky while tending the fire and saw the most unusual sight high in the west: a string of lights, very close together (relatively-speaking), moving along towards the south a fair clip. We are presuming these are the SpaceX Starlink Satellites (weren't 60 more launched today?). Whereas last time we saw them, they were spread out, and nearly 40 took around 20 minutes to pass overhead. The line of lights tonight looked like a space worm or train gliding quickly through the night sky. Eerie and wonderful and so cool all at the same time!

That definitely sounds like a Starlink "string of pearls" (as a friend dubbed them). My experience has been similar to yours: last spring, over several nights I saw them spread out over time (several visible at once, and more always appearing before the others faded out), until last June we saw a spectacular satellite train like the one you describe. (We haven't seen any since then).

In other space news, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully managed to collect a sample of asteroid 101955 Bennu the other day. It will be a few more days before they determine if a large enough sample was obtained or if they need to try again.

Interesting, stargazer, that was exactly the term I thought of when I first saw them ... a string of pearls, although I used other terms in my post above. Quite the sight, truly.

Tomorrow at 5:15am, Ingenuity is taking its first flight on Mars. I'm trying to decide if I want to attempt to get up that early to watch live . But wow am I excited about it.  

I wasn't up that early. But the flight was successful, and you can read about it (and watch) here.

It's made doubly interesting to me because "Ingenuity’s chief pilot, Håvard Grip," is a Norwegian.  

It's a very different way of steering an aircraft from any other method - they write the programming instructions and send them to Mars, where the program is compiled and then run, making the helicopter fly.

Anybody else following the space race between the billionaires? It looked like Virgin Galactic (Richard Branson's ship) had a successful flight this morning, though I missed watching it. 
Next up is Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos) which I believe is supposed to go further into space?

My husband told me one of the more interesting things about this is that the technology used by Blue Origin is easier to scale up to mass transportation into space, whereas Virgin Galactic is not. 

I've not been following this close at all aside from headlines, but the implications of the news itself is really interesting to think about. A couple of my kids are ready to head off to space. I can't say I'm a big fan of the idea myself. But I love watching it happen!

This is a sort of space race that would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago - private citizens racing to be the first to space in their own private rockets.

I've only followed it casually but the images today were pretty impressive.

Blue Origin has pointed out that Branson didn't officially reach space since he didn't reach the Karman line (an international standard 100 km high (62 miles) that unofficially defines where space begins). It's worth noting that some American agencies (like NASA and the FAA) define the limit at 80 km (50 miles), so by that standard Branson did reach space.

I'd entertain the idea of going into space for myself, though the $250,000 price tag makes it purely hypothetical.  

It reminds me of the fancy yacht races (America's Cup) our country has taken part in over the last 30 years, often described as "rich boys' toys" - certainly not for the average person.

Now there is a fancy rocket race, for very rich boys. So self-indulgent! Money to throw away,and they don't choose to give it to charities.

SpaceX launched its Inspiration 4 yesterday, the first all-civilian flight to orbit. (It doubles as a fund raiser for St. Jude's Children Research Hospital, raising up to $200 million for childhood cancer research).

It's visible from the ground if the timing and location are right; tonight it and the ISS will pass high overhead at almost the same time from my location.

Watched that live yesterday--have watched quite a few launches now, and they're still just as thrilling.  The countdown. The blastoff.  The first stage landing. Everything.

Always a bit nervous when it's a manned flight--I don't mind rockets blowing up if they're unmanned, but with people on board, not so much.