Cosmonaut Kononenko considered the name of the planet Earth a geographical misunderstanding

The name "Earth" is a kind of "geographical misunderstanding" for astronauts, since the planet they see from the International Space Station (ISS) is more than just a ball with land, water and stone. This opinion was expressed by Oleg Kononenko, head of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (CPC, part of Roscosmos), after the flight into space on April 7.

"When I went into orbit, I looked out the window for the first time, and I saw a piece of small land that flew by very quickly. And then the moonlit surface went. And the first feeling was that I realized that the name of the Earth was some kind of geographical misunderstanding," TASS quoted him as saying.

According to Kononenko, the Earth has ceased to be a "ball of water and stone" for him.

"This is some kind of living being that I came out of to look at it from the outside," the cosmonaut said during the Space with Knowledge marathon as part of Space Week.

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On April 3, a photo of Earth taken by astronauts of the Artemis II lunar mission from a distance of almost 70,000 km appeared on the NASA website. The planet is depicted in the shape of a crescent moon. A part of the Orion spacecraft is also visible in the photo. As noted in the space agency, this is the first time since the end of the Apollo program in 1972, when a person saw the Earth live from such a distance.

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