By Sophie Brown, CNN

updated 4:01 AM EST, Wed February 26, 2014

Where did North Korea go? Pyongyang looks like a tiny island in a sea of darkness in recent photos captured by NASA .

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(CNN) -- Give an astronaut on the International Space Station a digital camera and you're bound to end up with some astounding images -- especially if they're flying above North Korea.

When the space station passed over East Asia one night recently, a member of NASA's Expedition 38 crew took a series of photographs that show just how off-the-grid the Hermit Kingdom really is.

While thriving cities and major roads are seen glowing across South Korea and China, the landscape between the two countries is so dark that it's difficult to tell where the sea ends and North Korea begins.

Pyongyang "appears like a small island," says NASA, noting that the light emission from the North Korean capital is equivalent to the smaller towns of its neighbor to the south.

The space agency, which turned the images into a timelapse video, says city lights at night are a good indicator of the relative affluence of cities.

Looking at the images, it's hardly a surprise that energy use is dramatically different on either side of the 38th parallel. In South Korea, per capita power consumption is 10,162 kilowatt hours while in North Korea the figure is 739 kilowatt hours, according to World Bank data.

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Can you spot North Korea?

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ASTRONOMER Phill Parker has marked the 15-year anniversary of a curious episode that saw him send a rare piece of rock on a mission into space.

Mr Parker was walking in Butterton, Newcastle, in 1993, when he stumbled on a piece of ancient 'dolerite' rock, which was first discovered by legendary scientist Charles Darwin during his many geological surveys.

The rock has since been adopted by space travellers because of its association with the evolutionary theorist, who penned the famous work, On the Origin of Species.

And, as an experiment, Mr Parker organised for his own rock believed to be between 50 and 60 million years old to be blasted into space with Russian astronauts.

During the project, in 1999, the rock, dubbed the Darwin Millennium Space Rock, spent a total of 380 days at the Russian MIR Space Station.

It was later exhibited in museums around the world including the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery and the Kennedy Space Centre Visitor Complex in Florida, where it was viewed by more than 100,000 visitors.

Now a photo of the famous rock has been sent into space via a high altitude balloon to mark the 15th anniversary of the rock's interstellar adventure.

Mr Parker, aged 67, of the Westlands, said he hoped the rock would act as an inspiration for people to continue the exploration of space.

He said: "When I first sent that piece of rock to Moscow, I never imagined it was going to be showcased in museums around the world.

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Stargazer Phill marks 15 years since rock's space quest

NASAofficials admitted the near-drowning of an astronaut on a spacewalk last summer could have been prevented, investigators said in a report issued Wednesday.

That's the conclusion of an investigation board created byNASAin the wake of last July's close call outside the International Space Station.

Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano nearly drowned when his helmet filled with water around 45 minutes into the operation on July 16. He barely made it back inside alive.

But according to the report, his helmet had also leaked one week earlier, at the end of his first spacewalk. The report says the space station team misdiagnosed the first failure and should have delayed the second spacewalk until the problem was understood.

"The event was not properly investigated, which could have prevented putting a crew member at risk a week later," Chris Hansen, chairman of the Mishap Investigation Board, told reporters in a teleconference.

While the root cause of the leak remains under investigation, the probe traced the leak to a blocked water separator inside Parmitano's spacesuit. The spacesuits are nearly 35 years old, but Hansen said "nothing in our investigation pointed to aging issues with the suit."

Hansen and his team gave NASA a total of 49 recommendations to help the space agency improve internal communications and safety procedures. Hansen noted that NASA had already incorporated many of the investigators' suggestions.

"We've already resolved many of these items," Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said in the teleconference.

"This tells us we need to always be vigilant," International Space Station program manager Michael Suffredini said in the teleconference. "The report kind of brought home to us, at least in the case of the normal operations in a program that's 15 years old, that we evolve over time and we build processes and technologies that we think allow us to operate as safe as we can."

So much water filled Parmitano's helmet an estimated 1 liters that he could barely see and could not hear or speak. Investigators said Parmitano's "calm demeanor" during the incident quite possibly saved his life.

Excerpt from:

NASA could have prevented near-drowning of astronaut during July spacewalk, report reveals

Astronaut Luca Parmitano's helmet began leaking on a spacewalk in July Cooling water covered his ears, nose and mouth, and he nearly drowned Only now is NASA admitting that it was the second leak on the same suit Mishap Board to speak at news conference at 2pm EST (7pm GMT)

By Sara Malm and Alex Greig

PUBLISHED: 04:14 EST, 26 February 2014 | UPDATED: 06:58 EST, 26 February 2014

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NASA is set to admit that an astronaut who nearly drowned in space had water leak into his space suit twice last year.

Luca Parmitanos pressurized helmet began to fill with water, covering his eyes, ears and nose, while he was carrying out a space walk at the International Space Station in July.

Blinded by the water, Italian Parmitano relied on his memory to get him back to the airlock cabin and had to be pulled back inside the space station by his fellow astronauts.

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NASA to admit that space suit leaked on TWO separate occasions