Queen Elizabeth II’s Funeral: Earth-imaging Satellites Capture Crowd

Earth-imaging satellites have spied the massive crowds that gathered in London for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.

Images taken by the WorldView-3 satellite operated by Colorado-based satellite company Maxar Technologies on Saturday (Sept. 17) show hundreds of thousands of mourners queueing up to pay their respects to the late Queen, who passed away at the age of 96 on Sept. 8.

In the images, crowds can be seen waiting patiently in ‘The Queue,’ which stretched over 10 miles (16 kilometers), snaking alongside famous London landmarks such as the Eye of London, Buckingham Palace and the Palace of Westminster, the seat of England’s parliament.

A line of mourners snakes along a path beside the Eye of London, an observation wheel on the South Bank of the River Thames in London on Saturday, Sept. 17, 2022.

Big Ben can be seen at the north end of the Palace of Westminster in London as mourners stretch across Westminster Bridge as they wait to pay respects to Queen Elizabeth II on Saturday, Sept. 17, 2022.

Emotional outpourings from NASA, other space agencies and leading figures in the space community followed the news of the Queen’s passing. “Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s influence reached all corners of the world, and we are so fortunate that we had the privilege of hosting her visit to @NASA_Johnson. We join the planet in honoring her memory,” officials from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston wrote on Twitter(opens in new tab) on Sept. 8.

“ESA is saddened by the passing of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. Her Majesty witnessed the dawn of the space age, meeting astronauts from Neil Armstrong to Britain’s own Tim Peake, who gifted her with the Union Flag patch from his spacewalk during the Principia mission,” the European Space Agency tweeted the same day(opens in new tab).

As NASA’s official Twitter account pointed out on the day of her passing, Queen Elizabeth II was crowned before the launch of Sputnik kicked off the era of spaceflight in earnest.

In September 1969, Queen Elizabeth welcomed Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to Buckingham Palace to celebrate the mission’s successful landing on the moon.