[4] The film offers distinctive views of Earth and provides insight into the day-to-day activities of the crews, captured over fifteen months aboard the space station.

[7] The Advanced Visualization Laboratory at NCSA, led by a professor of art and design, Donna Cox,[8] helped produce the opening and closing scenes - a voyage into the Milky Way galaxy to the location of the Sun and a flight from the ISS to the Earth-like exoplanet nearly 500 light years away.

A Beautiful Planet features both natural and urban landscapes: capital cities illuminated by skyglow, lightning storms above clouds, Typhoon Maysak observed from its eye, polar auroras viewed from low Earth orbit, the Great Lakes of North America locked in ice and snow, and reefs below the surface of the Caribbean Sea.

[10] Images from the film capture a snow-capped segment of South America's Andes as well as some of Earth's driest and wettest areas, featuring an overhead sequence of the Namib Desert and the Atlantic Ocean's Skeleton Coast.

[5] Filmmaker Toni Myers shared with Los Angeles Times, "I wanted to inspire people, especially as to how beautiful, fragile, complex, diverse and varied the planet is...

[25] Shortly after Kelly's arrival at the Space Station, A Beautiful Planet shows him participating in an initial examination of his eye, to study and correct any vision decline reported by many astronauts.

The studies I did on my eyes - which don't seem to have degraded further during this mission - could help solve the mystery of what causes damage to astronauts' vision, as well as helping us understand more about the anatomy and disease processes of the eye in general.In the taste test phase of an experiment with space farming, Kelly and his fellow Expedition 44 crew-members Kjell Lindgren and Kimiya Yui are shown sampling red romaine lettuce that was grown in the Space Station's "Veggie" (or Vegetable Production) System.

The Veggie series of experiments are designed to ensure that future explorers visiting the Moon, Mars or an asteroid have access to fresh produce and to provide them with an opportunity for relaxation and relief from stress or boredom.

[31] A Beautiful Planet provides close-up footage of the Cupola, a domed, 360 degree observation bay on the nadir (Earth-facing) side of the Station's Tranquility module / Node 3.

The Cupola was constructed by the European Space Agency for the purpose of giving astronauts a workstation where they could observe the Earth, the exterior of the Station, visiting vehicles, and the operation of the ISS robotic arms.

Astronauts on the Space Station are required to spend approximately two hours each day in physical training to prevent the loss of bone density[35] and muscle atrophy that comes from living in an essentially weightless environment.

This is just outside of the Earth's appreciable atmosphere and provides a training area in which astronauts can put on space suits, leave the ISS life support systems behind, and conduct spacewalks - or "Extravehicular activity (EVA)."

[2] The astronauts who filmed the movie used digital IMAX cameras, and much of the footage they produced was shot through the seven window panes on the Space Station's domed Cupola module.

[43] The use of digital cameras permitted cinematographer James Neihouse to review image sequences almost immediately and make suggestions for retakes, and was a lightweight alternative to using IMAX film which can be developed only when returned from space.

Both scenes are based on astronomical catalog data and actual telescopic observations,[46] and both were created by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.