International Space Station‘s Moon transit: David Malin Awards

It zips around the Earth at 28,000km/h, so photographing the International Space Station as it crossed the face of the Moon was always going to be a challenge.

Wow: Kelvin Hennessy’s image of the ISS transiting the Moon

It was a blazing hot afternoon in February when Kelvin Hennessy pulled over on a quiet suburban street on the Gold Coast, got out and started setting up a big ­telescope. Naturally, a few curious people asked him what he was doing. The answer: preparing to capture an image of the International Space Station (ISS) as it passed in front of the Moon. If they’d asked him why, he would have said for the challenge of it. He knew exactly when the transit would occur, and he knew he was in the right spot to see it – various apps had given him that information. But it would be a fleeting spectacle: zipping around in low-Earth orbit at 28,000km/h, the ISS would take only half a ­second to cross the Moon’s face, to someone watching from Earth. No second chances, then.

The ISS is a testament to what fractious ­nations can do if they work together. Built and run by the space agencies of the US, Russia, ­Europe, Canada and Japan, the 109m-long craft, orbiting at 400km up (the Moon is around a thousand times further away, for ­reference), has played host to nearly 300 ­astronauts from 23 countries over the past 25 years. Alas, no Aussienaut has yet visited; we’ve been beaten to that honour by the likes of ­Belgium and Kazakhstan. (Fun fact: the ISS completes an orbit Earth every 93 minutes, so those aboard are treated to 16 sunrises and ­sunsets every day. Cocktails, anyone?)

Right now there are 11 Russian and American astronauts aboard, comprising ­Expedition 72, which runs until early next year, when they’ll swap with a new crew. The ISS is an orbiting laboratory, essentially: the current crew are ­carrying out experiments in fields such as ­genetic sequencing in microgravity, overseen by Commander Sunita (Suni to her friends) Williams, a 59-year-old former US Navy officer.

Hennessy, 60, an IT engineer from ­northern NSW, created this image – a finalist in the David Malin Awards – from a burst of 26 frames shot over the course of a ­second. Bravo to him. And also g’day, and ­privyet, to the ­astronauts aboard. If you’re in ­Sydney or Melbourne, you can see the ISS ­tonight; it’ll look like a bright, moving star, tracking low in the south for a few minutes shortly before 9pm (see spotthestation.nasa.gov for details). Give it a wave!