Eye in the dark sky

Nothing could have prepared Yuri Vladimirovich Usachev for the moment he first looked through the observation port of the Mir space station 200 miles above the Earth.

The sight that greeted his astounded gaze has haunted his dreams ever since. 'Earth seemed like a tiny fragile pearl set against a vast pitch-black sea,' he says.

The same feeling of awe gripped Hubble Space Telescope scientists when they viewed the first images of the deepest cosmos captured by the orbiting observatory.

Now, for the first time ever, a unique set of images of this island Earth, taken by legendary Russian pilot-cosmonaut Usachev, are to go on show in London.

Globe-spotter

The photographs were taken from the Nasa International Space Station (ISS), which Usachev commanded on his last mission in 2001.

The portfolio, called The Floating World, is part of a joint exhibition at the Barbican's Blue Gallery, which also features Hubble Telescope: The First 10 Years, a retrospective of the intergalactic images taken by the space telescope since its mirror was repaired in 1993.

Commander Usachev's first space flight was almost 10 years ago, but the overwhelming sense of wonder has never left him. 'These pictures offer those back on Earth, who could never have such an opportunity, some inkling of what it looks and feels like,' he says.

Usachev has spent more time in
space than any other person: 553 days. He's travelled 225million miles - 50 times the distance from Earth to the Moon. But his best-loved moments were those he spent gazing through a porthole aboard Mir and Nasa's ISS, taking endless pictures.

Only 341 human beings, all astronauts, have experienced that feeling of spinning like a star around the Earth at 17,000 miles an hour, and they have come to the realisation that this world we call home is the only one we've got.

The incredible snapshots are the work of a generation of space photographers who have captured a unique record - a small fragment of which will be the centrepiece of the exhibition at the Barbican.

'I enjoyed the launches and landings, the dockings and space walks,' Usachev recalls. 'But, ultimately, the most extraordinary moments were just looking back at the astonishing variations of light dappling on the upper atmosphere of the Earth, the clouds, the oceans, the land mass itself.'

Spy in the sky

Ironically, one of the most detailed images taken by Usachev is of the Baikanur spacedrome from the ISS space station. The former top-secret Soviet space base in Kazakhstan brought the world to the brink of war in 1960, when the Russians shot down US pilot Gary Powers' U2 spy plane as he attempted to take some high-altitude photos of the Soviet military facility.

For Usachev, such geopolitics seem irrelevant in space. 'It takes 90 minutes to go around the Earth and, when you're in space, you don't see nationalities or barriers - only a small blue shared planet hanging in the vast darkness of space,' he says.

These days, the biggest problem facing Earth's astronauts is half a world away from the nearly deadly international rivalries of the Cold War.

As Rex Hall, president of the British Interplanetary Society and author of books on the Soviet space programme, recalls: 'It was the world's first spaceman, Yuri Gagarin, who put it most succinctly. When an editor asked him what he found most difficult about being a cosmonaut, he replied, "Fame".'

The Floating World and Hubble Telescope: The First 10 Years run from today until Jan 31 at The Blue Gallery, 15 Great Sutton Street EC1V, Mon to Fri 10am to 6pm, Sat 10am to 4pm, free. Tel: 020 7490 3833. www.thebluegallery.co.uk Tube: Barbican