Astronauts helped capture 360-degree panoramas of the insides of the ISS modules, as well as views down to the Earth below.

Some of the photography features pop-up text descriptions, marking the first time such annotations have appeared on the Maps platform.

This is not the first time 360-degree imagery has been captured beyond Earth.

In 2015, the European Space Agency published its own interactive tour of the ISS. And last year Nasa repurposed images captured by its Pathfinder mission to Mars to create clips suitable for virtual reality headsets.

However, one of the benefits of Google’s technology is that it should give members of the public an improved sense of freedom of movement and a greater choice of viewpoints than had been possible before.

The tech giant said it hoped to inspire the public to further explore the science and engineering involved in space exploration.

“Every [ISS] component had to be flown on a space shuttle or rocket and constructed and connected in space, and it had to be done with such precision that it formed a hermetic environment to support life,” project manager Alice Liu told the BBC.

“That is an engineering marvel that people should care about and know about.”

Bungee cords

The firm said creating the latest Street View expansion had posed unique challenges.

Past efforts – including capturing underwater views of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and elevated sights from Peru’s Machu Picchu citadel – involved transporting specialist camera equipment to the locations.

But the cost and certification processes that would have been required to do this for the ISS meant it was not practical this time, nor could the US company send its own staff to take the photographs.

Instead, it had to rely on the astronauts already on board the ISS, who used digital single lens reflex (DSLR) cameras they already had to hand.

“Typically, to stitch panoramic images we take a camera and mount it on a fixed mount and rotate it around,” explained Ms Liu.

“In space there were no tripods, so we ended up using a really simple set-up: a pair of bungee cords strapped in the module in a criss-cross fashion, so that the crossing point defined the centre of where the camera needed to be.

“The astronauts had to take the pictures at the defined angles and float around the camera to complete the set of images.”

It took up to 24 such images to create a single panorama.

The astronauts had to fit the activity round their other duties and, from first snap to last image download to Google, the initiative lasted four months.

Image copyrightGOOGLE

“There are a lot of obstacles up there, and we had limited time to capture the imagery,” recalled astronaut Thomas Pesquet in a blog.

“Oh, and there’s that whole zero gravity thing.”

The notes that pop up as the user moves among the station’s 15 modules provide background information about the equipment on display, and are intended to help make sense of what Google acknowledges can be a “confusing” experience.

Ms Liu confirmed the annotation technology could be rolled out to some of her firm’s other Street View locations in the future.

“But we are not planning on using it as a form of advertising,” she added.

While the ISS tour might not provide Google the opportunity to make money in itself, one expert suggested it would help the firm keep its mapping products one step ahead of Apple and other rivals.

“This feels like a cute marketing exercise that will keep Maps and Street View front and centre in consumers’ minds,” commented Ben Wood from the CCS tech consultancy.

“It adds a dimension of fun and one could argue also education, as it’s a tool you could see schools adopting if they are doing projects on space.”

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Source: BBC

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As rocket-warning sirens sounded in southern Israel, the military said Hamas had fired at least 18 rockets from Gaza and Israel’s “Iron Dome” interceptor system brought down two. Gaza militants said they had fired 10 rockets on Friday.

In the first casualties since hostilities resumed on Friday, Palestinian medical officials said a 10-year-old boy was killed in an Israeli strike near a mosque in Gaza City. In Israel, police said two people were injured by mortar fire from Gaza.

After a huge explosion in Gaza City, apparently from an air raid, a military spokesman said Israel had responded to Hamas rocket fire by launching air strikes at “terror sites” across the Gaza Strip.

“We will continue to strike Hamas, its infrastructure, its operatives, and restore security for the State of Israel,” Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner said in a statement.

An Israeli government official said Israel would not negotiate with Palestinians about renewing the truce in Gaza as long as militants continued to launch rockets.

Heavy civilian casualties and destruction during Israel’s campaign against militants in packed residential areas of the Gaza Strip have raised international alarm over the past month, but efforts to extend a ceasefire at talks in Cairo failed.

Israel had earlier said it was ready to agree to an extension as Egyptian go-betweens pursued negotiations with Israeli and Palestinian delegates.

Hamas said Palestinian factions had not agreed to extend the truce, but would continue negotiations in Cairo.

An Islamic Jihad official added: “Discussions in Cairo have not finished and we will pursue our efforts to stop the aggression and achieve the just demands of our people.”

The Palestinians had wanted Israel to agree in principle to demands which include a lifting of the blockade on the Gaza Strip, the release of prisoners and the opening of a sea port.

The armed wing of Hamas released a statement late on Thursday warning Palestinian negotiators not to agree to an extension unless Israel offered concessions.

Naval Blockade

Israel has shown little interest in easing its naval blockade of Gaza and controls on overland traffic and airspace, suspecting Hamas could restock with weapons from abroad.

Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz, speaking on Army Radio, raised the prospect of Israel relaunching a ground operation it halted on Tuesday and “taking control of the Gaza Strip in order to topple the Hamas regime”.

But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shown little inclination to do so.

In Gaza, some families who had returned to their homes in the northern town of Beit Hanoun during the ceasefire gathered their belongings and headed back to the United Nations shelters where they had sought refuge over the past few weeks.

Beit Hanoun resident Yamen Mahmoud, a 35-year-old father of four, said: “Today I am fleeing again, back to displacement. I am not against resistance but we need to know what to do. Is it war or peace?”

Gaza officials say the war has killed 1,876 Palestinians, most of them civilians. Hamas said on Thursday it had executed an unspecified number of Palestinians as Israeli spies.

Israel says 64 of its soldiers and three civilians have died in the fighting that began on July 8, after a surge in Palestinian rocket salvoes into Israel.

It expanded its air and naval bombardment of the Gaza Strip into a ground offensive on July 17, and pulled its infantry and armor out of the enclave on Tuesday after saying it had destroyed more than 30 infiltration tunnels dug by militants.

Alienate Egypt

Hamas’s refusal to extend the ceasefire could further alienate Egypt, whose government has been hostile to the group and which ultimately controls Gaza’s main gateway to the world, the Rafah border crossing.

The announcement that the truce would not be extended came a few minutes after it expired at 0500 GMT (1 a.m. EDT) after lengthy talks that continued in Cairo through the night.

Palestinian negotiators from factions including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah left their luxury hotel for talks with Egyptian intelligence at 9.30 p.m. on Thursday, returning more than six and a half hours later looking subdued and saying no deal had yet been reached.

Palestinian officials paced the lobby, speaking on their phones and holding meetings, trying to reach a final decision as the deadline approached.

A source at Cairo airport said the Israeli delegation left shortly before the truce expired. He said the Israeli visit had lasted nine hours, longer than the previous two visits this week, as Egyptian mediators pushed the two sides to renew the truce. There was no immediate comment from Egypt.

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Source: Reuters

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The soldier, named as Hadar Goldin, 23, went missing when Israeli forces trying to destroy a suspected militant tunnel were attacked, Israel’s military said.

Israel and Hamas accused each other of breaching the 72-hour ceasefire.

Palestinian sources said at least 35 people were killed by Israeli shelling in the southern town of Rafah.

In 2006 Palestinian militants captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and held him for five years.

He was released in November 2011 in exchange for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.

Hamas has not commented on the latest reported capture.

Some 1,460 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have died in the latest conflict and 63 Israelis, mostly soldiers.

The ceasefire had been brokered by the US and UN to give civilians a reprieve from the violence, and had been seen as an unforeseen breakthrough after days of diplomatic deadlock.

Also on Friday, Palestinian and Israeli delegations arrived in Cairo, Egypt, with the hope of negotiating a longer-term cessation of hostilities, but Egyptian officials said the talks had now been postponed.

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Source: BBC

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The army said it had warned residents to stay indoors.

Palestinian sources said at least eight people had been killed in an Israeli attack in Gaza. Israel said it was in response to rocket fire from Hamas.

Some 1,460 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have died in the conflict and 63 Israelis, mostly soldiers.

The ceasefire had been brokered by the US and UN to give civilians a reprieve from the violence, and had been seen as an unforeseen breakthrough after days of diplomatic deadlock.

Palestinian and Israeli delegations have arrived in Cairo, Egypt, with the hope of negotiating a longer-term cessation of hostilities, but the fate of the talks now seems unclear.

The BBC’s Bethany Bell, in Jerusalem, says there had been enormous international pressure for a 72-hour lull to allow people in Gaza to bury their dead and restock with food.

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Source: BBC

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But some two hours after the truce began, a Reuters photographer and the Gaza Interior Ministry said Israeli tanks opened fire in the southern Rafah area, and Hamas media reported four people were killed. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.

The 72-hour break announced in a joint statement by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was the most ambitious attempt so far to end more than three weeks of fighting, and followed mounting international alarm over a rising Palestinian civilian death toll.

“This ceasefire is critical to giving innocent civilians a much-needed reprieve from violence,” the statement said.

After the ceasefire began at 1 a.m. EDT (0500 GMT), Gaza’s streets began to fill with Palestinian families. Laden with belongings, they streamed back to homes they fled during fierce fighting that destroyed or damaged thousands of dwellings.

In Israel, sirens that have sent tens of thousands running for shelter daily fell silent.

“We are going back to Beit Lahiya (in the northern Gaza Strip),” said Asharaf Zayed, a 38-year-old father of four. “We hope the truce will be permanent and we won’t have to go back to a U.N. shelter.”

Israel launched its offensive in Hamas Islamist-dominated Gaza on July 8, unleashing air and naval bombardments in response to a surge of cross-border rocket attacks. Tanks and infantry pushed into the densely populated territory of 1.8 million on July 17.

Gaza officials say at least 1,459 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed in the battered enclave and nearly 7,000 wounded. Sixty-one Israeli soldiers have been killed in the fighting and more than 400 wounded. Three civilians have been killed by Palestinian rockets in Israel.

Amid strong public support in Israel for the Gaza campaign, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had faced intense pressure from abroad to stand his forces down.

International calls for an end to the bloodshed intensified after shelling on Wednesday that killed 15 people sheltering in a U.N.-run school in Gaza’s Jabalya refugee camp.

The truce left Israeli ground forces in place in the Gaza Strip and a military spokeswoman said operations were continuing to destroy a warren of tunnels through which Hamas has menaced Israel’s southern towns and army bases.

“We are doing what needs to be done in order to neutralise them,” she said.

Accomplishing that mission – the military said on Thursday the tunnels hunt could be wrapped up in a few days – could open the way for Israel to declare it has achieved the main goal of the ground assault and withdraw its soldiers from Gaza.

“Our understanding is that the Israelis will make clear to the U.N. where their lines are, roughly, and they will continue to do operations to destroy tunnels that pose a threat to Israeli territory that lead from the Gaza strip into Israel proper as long as those tunnels exist on the Israel side of their lines,” a U.S. State Department official said.

Hamas, isolated in an Arab world concerned about the rise Islamist militancy, is seeking an end to Israel’s blockade of Gaza. It also wants a hostile Egypt to ease restrictions at its Rafah crossing with the territory imposed after the military toppled Islamist president Mohamed Mursi last July.

Israel has balked at freeing up Gaza’s borders under any de-escalation deal unless Hamas’s disarmament is also guaranteed.

Cairo Negotiations

A senior State Department official travelling with Kerry in India said U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns would arrive in Cairo on Saturday and that Frank Lowenstein, the acting U.S envoy for Middle East peace, and another U.S. official, Jonathan Schwartz, would be there on Friday.

The official said he believed the Palestinians would be in the Egyptian capital on Friday, while the Israelis would arrive on Saturday.

The Palestinian delegation will be comprised of Hamas, Western-backed Fatah, the Islamic Jihad militant group and a number of smaller factions, Palestinian officials said. But U.S. officials said representatives from Israel and the United States would not sit across the table from Hamas, which the two countries, along with the European Union, consider a terrorist group.

Just over an hour before the ceasefire was due to take effect militants fired 11 rockets into Israel, one of which was intercepted by the Iron Dome defence system over the centre of the country, a military spokeswoman said.

Israeli strikes killed 14 people in Gaza, including eight from one family, hospital officials said. Earlier, Hamas rockets set off sirens in the Tel Aviv area and one was intercepted.

Israel’s military said five of its soldiers were killed late on Thursday by a mortar bomb.

Previous international attempts to broker a humanitarian truce were less successful, securing shorter periods of calm, with some collapsing immediately after being announced.

U.N. political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman said it took a massive diplomatic push to achieve the ceasefire.

“The Egyptians played an important role, the Qataris played an essential role in helping bring the parties on board, the Turks were in touch with all sides. This was a collective effort,” Feltman told CNN.

Kerry, speaking to reporters in New Delhi, said the parties needed to find a way to address Israel’s security concerns and to ensure that the people of Gaza could live in safety and dignity.

“All the people involved in this have strong demands and strong visions on what the future should look like. Israel has to be able to live in peace and security, without terror attacks and rockets and tunnels and sirens going off,” Kerry said.

“And Palestinians need to be able to live with the opportunity to educate their children and move freely and share in the rest of the world and lead a life that is different from the one they have long suffered,” he added.

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Source: Reuters

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Dozens of deaths reported each day. Dwindling fuel and water supplies. And now Gaza’s only power plant is off the grid after it was struck.

The violence continued Wednesday morning, when Israeli forces shelled the Abu Hussein School in northern Gaza and killed at least 20 people, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.

The Israeli military said it is investigating.

The school was a U.N. facility based in Gaza’s Jebaliya refugee camp, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency said. Agency spokesman Gaza Adnan Abu Hasna said 19 people were killed and 126 were injured.

Abu Hasna attributed the high number of casualties to the timing of the attack — when many had gathered for morning prayers.

The daily bloodshed is now exasperated by crumbling infrastructure from the violence.

Palestinian officials blamed an Israeli airstrike for the attack on Gaza’s only power plant. But Israel said it didn’t target the power plant.

“I’ve gone through our air force, our navy, our ground forces on the ground. Haven’t been able to determine it was IDF activity,” Israel Defense Forces spokesman Peter Lerner said.

Either way, residents must depend almost entirely on small generators for electricity. Clean water is inaccessible for most. And some 3,600 people have lost their homes.

“We cannot supply electricity” for hospitals, sewage treatment or domestic use, said Fathi al-Sheikh Khalil, deputy chairman of the Palestinian Energy Natural Resources Authority in Gaza. “This is a disaster.”

Salah Jarour owns a small convenience store in Gaza. He now runs the store in the dark.

“This is not fair. We have children. Hospitals need power,” Jarour said. “The Israelis are not human.”

Many roads in Gaza City are deserted, except for ambulances pre-positioned to assist in case of an Israeli airstrike.

At least 1,242 people in Gaza have died and more than 7,000 have been wounded since the conflict between Israel and Hamas began, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said.

The number of militants killed is unclear, but the United Nations estimates that 70% to 80% of the dead are civilians.

On the Israeli side, 53 soldiers have died since Operation Protective Edge began July 8, according to the Israel Defense Forces. Three civilians have been killed in Israel as well.

No cease-fire, but lots of blame

Hamas and Israel blamed one another for the lack of a cease-fire — raising questions about just what it will take to end the fighting in Gaza.

International efforts to broker a deal to end the violence failed again Tuesday, with Hamas rejecting a cease-fire proposal put forward by the Palestinian Authority that called for a 24-hour truce that could be extended to 72 hours.

The sticking points: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said any truce must allow for its protection against tunnels used by Palestinian militants in Gaza to make their way into Israel.

“Hamas is responsible for all deaths on their side and on our side because they are the ones who kept this conflict going,” Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev told CNN.

“People are fighting and people are dying because Hamas said no to a cease-fire.”

But Hamas says any deal must include an end to Israel’s blockade of Gaza. On Hamas-run TV, Mohammed Deif, chief of the group’s military wing, said that “there is no middle ground” regarding a truce until Israel ends its “siege” of Gaza.

“The Israeli enemy will not have security as long as we don’t have security for our people,” he said.

Hamas wants Israel to lift a blockade it began on Gaza in 2007, a move Israel has said was necessary to stop Hamas and other allied militant group from bringing weapons into Gaza.

But Israel has been criticized for sealing the borders, with aid groups saying the blockade has cut off basic supplies and created a humanitarian crisis.

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Source: CNN

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About 10,000 protesters marched from Ramallah towards East Jerusalem, where they were met by Israeli forces.

At least 15 people died and scores were injured when a UN-run shelter came under fire in Gaza on Thursday.

More than 800 Palestinians and 35 Israelis have died since the Israel-Hamas conflict began on 8 July.

Palestinian leaders in the West Bank have called for a “day of anger” on Friday, one of the last days of Ramadan.

The protest at Qalandia, outside Ramallah, saw Israeli border police use “riot control measures” and live fire. Protesters also used live ammunition, Israel said.

Large protests were also reported in Jerusalem on Thursday evening, after Israeli police prevented men under 50 from visiting the al-Aqsa mosque.

At least 20 protesters were arrested after they threw rocks at police, Israeli police said.

Israel launched its military offensive with the declared objective of stopping Hamas firing rockets into Israel.

It has since discovered a network of tunnels used by militants to infiltrate Israeli territory, and has vowed to destroy them to restore security.

Efforts to broker a ceasefire have been continuing despite the continued violence.

Reports suggest a deal under discussion could allow Israeli forces to remain in Gaza to destroy tunnels.

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Source: BBC

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Hundreds of Palestinians were in the school in Beit Hanoun, fleeing heavy fighting in the area.

It is the fourth time that a UN facility has been hit in Israel’s offensive against Hamas militants.

In the past 16 days of fighting, more than 725 Palestinians and 30 Israelis have been killed, officials say.

Israel launched its military offensive on 8 July with the declared objective of stopping Hamas firing rockets from Gaza.

Earlier on Thursday, UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said that it was “vital” to have a ceasefire.

“We have over 118,000 people now who are sheltering in UN schools… people are running out of food. Water is also a serious concern,” she said.

She said the conflict meant 44% of Gaza was a no-go area for Palestinians, and residents were running out of food.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday he regretted each Palestinian civilian death, but said they were “the responsibility of Hamas”.

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Source: BBC

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