A British Airways Pilot Took This Amazing Photo Of A Spacecraft Returning To Earth

The Soyuz spacecraft carrying the Olympic torch returned to Earth on Monday, and a British Airways pilot was in the perfect place to snap a shot of it shortly before it landed in Kazakhstan.

Captain Simon Wijker took the photo during a flight from London to Singapore. He sent it to European Space Agency, thinking they might be interested. He described it as "a white ball of fire traveling at very high speed following roughly the curvature of the Earth disappearing over the horizon to the North," according to an ESA blog post.

Astronauts Luca Parmitano, Karen Nyberg, and Fyodor Yurchikhin were on board, along with the torch.

Here's the photo: