A perigee full moon or supermoon is seen over the The Peace Monument on the grounds of the United States Capitol, Sunday, August 10, 2014, in Washington. A supermoon occurs when the moon’s orbit is closest (perigee) to Earth at the same time it is full. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

ISS020-E-028072 (5 Aug. 2009) --- Sevastopol, Ukraine is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 20 crew member on the International Space Station. The port city of Sevastopol is located in southernmost Ukraine on the Crimean Peninsula. The city is an important naval base due to the numerous inlets and bays along the coastline (bottom center). During the Cold War, the city was the base of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet, but now services vessels of both the Ukraine and Russia. The main economy of the city is based on trade and shipbuilding, but Sevastopol is also a popular tourist and resort destination for visitors from the Commonwealth of Independent Countries (formed from former Soviet Republics). This photograph highlights the jagged coastline of the southern Crimean Peninsula and the various docking areas of Sevastopol. The urban area is light gray, and is bounded to the north and west by the Black Sea, to the south by vegetated (light green) and fallow (tan) agricultural fields, and to the east by the city of Inkerman and green vegetated uplands to the northwest of the Crimean Mountains. The city of Balaklava to the south houses another relic of the Cold War ? an underground Soviet submarine base that is now open to the public as a monument. The Chernaya River issues into the Black Sea near Inkerman, flowing into the Sevastopol Inlet to the west.

In this photograph, Vince Huegele of the Marshall Space Flight Center's (MSFC's) Space Optics Manufacturing Technology Center (SOMTC) inspects the coating on the mirrors for Starshine 3, a satellite that resembles a high-tech disco ball that was placed into Earth orbit. The sphere, which is covered by hundreds of quarter-sized mirrors that reflect sunlight to observers on the ground, helps students study the effects of solar activity on the Earth's atmosphere. Ed White Middle School in Huntsville, Alabama is among 500 schools worldwide whose students helped grind and polish mirrors for the Starshine 3 satellite as a part of the Starshine Project. The total of up to 1,500 mirrors will improve the sunlight flash rate and make the satellite more visible at twilight as it orbits the Earth. These mirrors have been coated with a scratch-resistant, anti-oxidizing layer of silicon dioxide by optical engineers and technicians at the Hill Air Force Base in Utah and MSFC. Starshine-3 was launched on an Athena I unmarned launch vehicle out of the Kodiak Launch Complex, Alaska, on September 29, 2001. Starshine 3 is nearly 37 inches (1 meter) in diameter, weighs 200 pounds (91 kilograms), and carries 1500 mirrors that were polished by approximately 40,000 students in 1,000 schools in 30 countries. Three small, optically-reflective spherical Starshine student satellites have been designed by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and built by an informal volunteer coalition of organizations and individuals in the U.S. and Canada. This coalition, called Project Starshine, is headquartered in Monument, Colorado.