Besides it being a long wall, its iconic structure has a history that runs down far more than 2,300 years. On the ground, the images were digitally rotated and assembled into this large collage. The Great Wall of China is an ancient series of walls and fortifications located in northern China, built around 500 years ago. The Great Wall of China is a magnificent structure comprising of numerous walls which stretches far more than 13,000 miles, Situated in Northern China. The International Space Station flies at roughly 400 km altitude so Thomas used the longest lens available onboard: 1150 mm. As Arthur Waldron pointed out in The Great Wall: From History to Myth (Cambridge University Press, 1990), the walls constructed under the Qin were far from. Thomas asked to have the series of highly zoomed pictures aligned into this collage to show the river in detail. The shots aren’t great, there was a lot of fog, but it’s still very visible in the middle.'

It is impossible to see it in the tiny viewfinder of the camera (imagine the picture below in the size of a camera viewfinder), but using geographical features, you can navigate to where you think it should be and shoot it blind! With good guidance from our NASA instructor and with a bit of luck I got a few shots of it. But, if you know where to look, you can take a picture of it. The now-famous national monument fell into decay following the Ming Dynasty, when the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912 CE) took power and expanded the border of China. 'Everyone always asks whether it’s possible to see the Great Wall of China from space. The Great Wall in the present day is almost completely the work of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1664 CE) who added the distinctive watchtowers and expanded the length and width of the wall. Thomas shared this image on social media with the caption: This collage of pictures shows the Great Wall of China, but it is hard to see, zoom in an explore to see if you spot it. In his free time, like many astronauts, he enjoys looking out of the Cupola windows at Earth. ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is spending six months on the International Space Station as part of his second mission 'Alpha'.

The great wall