The U.S. just celebrated its 250th birthday, and Americans living off the planet had a great view of some of the parties down below.
“The International Space Station orbited over Los Angeles on July 4th as America marked 250 years of independence with a burst of fireworks lighting up the city below — a celebration so bright it reached all the way to space!” NASA officials said on Monday (July 6) via the agency’s ISS X account.
That post featured a 15-second video captured from the orbiting lab, which showed hundreds of firework shows flickering across the L.A. area at night like cameras flashing in quick succession at a concert or a football game.
The International Space Station orbited over Los Angeles on July 4th as America marked 250 years of independence with a burst of fireworks lighting up the city below — a celebration so bright it reached all the way to space! pic.twitter.com/SMCXTFYRjDJuly 6, 2026
There are seven people living in Earth orbit at the moment, members of the ISS’ current Expedition 74. Three are Americans: NASA astronauts Jack Hathaway, Jessica Meir and Chris Williams, all of whom serve as flight engineers.
The others are the European Space Agency‘s Sophie Adenot and cosmonauts Andrey Fedyaev, Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev. Kud-Sverchkov is Expedition 74’s commander, while Adenot, Fedyaev and Mikaev are flight engineers.
NASA didn’t just passively observe celebrations of the United States’ 250th birthday; the agency marked the occasion in multiple ways as well.
For example, NASA painted big “America 250” logos on the Space Launch System rocket that launched the Artemis 2 astronauts around the moon this past April. The four Artemis 2 crewmates also wore special patches commemorating the anniversary.
In addition, NASA conducted a series of airplane flyovers in the Washington, D.C. area over the July 4 weekend and will perform more in the coming weeks and months. You can learn more about the agency’s anniversary activities in this Space.com story.
