NASA Astronaut Nichole Ayers Lightning ISS
Photo credit: Nichole Ayers
The International Space Station (ISS) flies around our planet at an incredible speed of 17,000 miles per hour. On the first of July 2025, NASA Astronaut Nichole Ayers captured this stunning photograph of a massive lightning storm from an ISS window while moving through the northern part of Italy.

Nichole was 250 miles above Earth as she peered out the porthole window at Milan, caught up in the mighty storm churning out there. Turbulent clouds stretch out before you in this scene, with lightning bolts flashing through them, as if they formed an incredible patch work quilt shining from inside to out.

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NASA Astronaut Nichole Ayers Lightning ISS
Nichole’s unique perspective in capturing the “magic” within these pictures also has to do with her background as a combat pilot in the Air Force, where she has thousands of hours of flight experience before she joined NASA’s astronaut program in 2021. Nichole has been aboard the space station for a year as a member of SpaceX crew 10 when she took this photograph. Nichole’s camera has been focused on Earth for months, taking pictures of many storm systems that are similar to this one. Scientists study these pictures to determine what’s happening in the upper atmosphere.