A video was recorded by the International Space Station as it orbits our planet, giving us a fast–travel flyover view of the world we live in.

The video is absolutely stunning with lights and water and clouds bursting with electric charges like a natural lightning fireworks display. It’s so incredible to see, in fact, that it’s hard to believe it’s even real. What has Roland Emmerich been up to lately? Anyone? Bueller?

You too can go on this quick–yet–powerful space adventure by checking out the video below now!

Space Shuttle Discovery is finishing up its final mission, a 13-day visit to the International Space Station. The ship will make its final landing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday after which it will be retired. For those of us who have grown up with Discovery, it’s a little sad to see it retire.

Each morning, a special song usually picked by their families awakens the astronauts on board. For this last mission NASA decided to hold an online contest to allow fans to pick the songs. Nearly 2.5 million votes were cast between August 20, 2010 and November 1, 2010 Alexander Courage‘s theme song to the original Star Trek television series was the second most popular song of the ones available getting 671,133 votes or 27.2% of the total votes.

Members of the Expedition 26 crew sent a little holiday message for all of us here on Earth as they orbit over 200 miles above us at the International Space Station. The message was sent by NASA astronauts Commander Scott Kelly and Catherine Coleman, and European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli.

Watch the video here below.

Also, you can send a digital holiday greeting postcard through NASA to the team aboard the ISS.

This video message really makes you realize that it’s all our turf.

The new Star Trek has arrived at the White House and all the way up to the International Space Station.

Paramount transferred Star Trek, which opened in theaters last weekend, earlier this week to NASA‘s Mission Control in Houston, which then uplinked the film to the space station where NASA astronaut Michael Barratt can then watch the movie on a laptop computer inside the Unity module, 220 miles above Earth.

President Obama watched the new Star Trek movie at the White House’s movie theater and he told Newsweek that he thought the film was good. In a Q&A with the magazine, the President acknowledged how the media has been saying that he is like the logical Vulcan Spock and he even gave the Vulcan salute.

A while back, Gizmodo had the brilliant idea to find the actual size specs of fictional space crafts and create a chart comparing their size to our own very real International Space Station. Now with the the release of Star Trek and the presentation of a new, much larger USS Enterprise, they’ve decided to do the same thing. Click the image to go bigger, but click the link above to go to the site and see the full-size jumbo version!

Size Comparisons Of The Space Crafts Of ‘Star Trek,’ ‘Star Wars,’ ‘Battlestar Galactica,’ & Real Life!

As it turns out, the old Battlestar Galactica‘s ship is the one being used for the chart. It was found out later that the new Galactica measures 1,438.64 meters — almost 1,000 meters longer than the new Enterprise, and very close to the 1,600 (about a mile) meter Imperial Star Destroyer from Star Wars.

I hope Gizmodo soon has a chart that includes the new Galactica and the Star Destroyer. It would be very interesting to see how they dwarf these other, very massive ships. It’s also cool to see just how big the International Space Station is. You could go even further and add man-made cities and worlds like the Death Star and the Citadel from Mass Effect.