Many people's lifelong dreams include visiting outer space. While it's probable that the vast majority of people won't get to visit space, at least in this lifetime, space can still be experienced via the wonders of the Internet. Case in point: the International Space Station can now be explored in Google Maps' Street View.

Thomas Pesquet, an astronaut at the European Space Agency, lived on the International Space Station as a flight engineer for six months. During that time, he assisted Google in capturing images for Street View of what the ISS looks like from the inside, as well as what Earth looks like from up there. This marked the first time that Street View had been taken outside Earth.

The Street View footage was captured using a gravity-free DSLR rig that was jointly designed by the Street View team and NASA. Pesquet used this to capture still images that were stitched together into 360-degree panoramas back down in Earth. Given the fact that there's zero gravity, how busy the ISS is, and all the cables and modules that are scattered everywhere, this was no easy task.

The video embedded above shows some behind-the-scenes footage of how all this was captured. If you'd like to read more about the experience in space, or if you want to see the results of Pesquet's hard work, check the source links below.

Source: Google, Google Maps