PUBLISHED ONOctober 10, 2025 11:57 AMBYSean LerWe have all seen lightning strikes in Singapore before, but from 400km above in outer space?
Electrifying views of lightning strikes illuminating the city state seen from the International Space Station (ISS) on June 15 was shared by Nasa astronaut Nicole Ayers on her X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram accounts that day.
Ayers was a pilot on Expedition 72/73 at the International Space Station (ISS) which orbits at around 400km from earth.
That day, when the ISS was orbiting at about 417km above the South China Sea, Ayers, who frequently shares her life in the ISS on social media, saw lightning striking and illuminating the clouds over Singapore during a storm.
Nasa said that the photograph was taken at about 3.18am.
Ayers said in her Instagram post: "Sometimes we see lightning strikes that illuminate an entire city at once. This is Singapore last night, and that was a huge thunderstorm. It's hard to believe, but these pictures were taken all in the span of 1/40 of a second!"
Then, the south-west monsoon was prevailing over Singapore and the surrounding region.
According to Nasa's people page, Ayers is a fighter pilot with the US Air Force and is trained on the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jet.
The air force lieutenant-colonel has a master's degree in computational and applied mathematics from Rice University in Houston and became a full-fledged astronaut in 2022.
She was deployed on ISS on March 14 and returned home on Aug 9.
