July 6, 2020
Maui, the 2nd biggest island within the Hawaiian Island/Emperor Seamount Chain, hosts among the biggest wind farms in the state. All 34 functional wind turbines of the Kaheawa Wind Power I and II centers show up in this picture taken by an astronaut from the International Space Station (ISS). The wind farm lies to the south of a golf course, farming fields, and the village of Waikapu. All stand at the foot of Pu’u Kukui, a big mountain peak in the Mauna Kahalawai (West Maui Mountains) that is thick with plant life.
Descending a little over half a mile (1 kilometer) down the southeast side of Pu’u Kukui, the turbine field powers 10 to 15 percent of Maui’s annual electrical power use. After solar energy, wind energy is Hawaii’s second-most utilized renewable resource resource. Aiming to supply renewable resource while securing regional bird and bat types, Kaheawa was the very first wind farm in the United States to execute an environment preservation strategy.
Astronaut picture ISS063-E-40313 was gotten on July 6, 2020, with a Nikon D5 digital electronic camera utilizing a 1600 millimeter lens and is supplied by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by a member of the Expedition 63 team. The image has actually been cropped and boosted to enhance contrast, and lens artifacts have actually been gotten rid of. The International Space Station Program supports the lab as part of the ISS National Lab to assist astronauts take images of Earth that will be of the best worth to researchers and the general public, and to make those images easily readily available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be seen at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by Sara Schmidt, GeoControl Systems, JETS Contract at NASA-JSC.
