In the 1990s, a photo taken by the probe Voyager within a distance of 6 billion kilometers showed the Earth as a small island right in the middle of an infinite black ocean. A ‘Blue Marble’ turned into a ‘Pale Blue Dot’ and initiated a public discourse about a sustainable handling of our resources. Therefore, ‘Blue Dot – Shaping the Future’ became the title of the mission of Alexander Gerst’s space flight. From May 28 to November 10, 2014 the ESA Astronaut fascinated the German public with his live-impressions from the International Space Station (ISS). Simultaneously, NASA launched the High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) payload to the International Space Station (ISS). HDEV consists of four commercially available high definition cameras. Mounted on the ESA Columbus module, the cameras covers three different perspectives: aft, forward, and nadir view. The only European partner of the HDEV experiment and exclusively in charge of filing the fascinating footage is the German project ‘Columbus Eye – Live-Imagery from the ISS in Schools’. Columbus Eye is carried out at the University of Bonn and sponsored by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Space Administration with funds from the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi). It aims to develop educational material based on the earth observing imagery from the ISS and has already published a learning portal on HDEV (www.columbuseye.uni-bonn.de). Accordingly, this paper presents the educational valorization of the HDEV footage for teachers, pupils and students. Insights into the process chain of recording, enhancing, storing, and finally publishing the HDEV videos are given. Afterwards, it will be explained how the measurable world behind those colorful images and videos taken from space can act as illustrative teaching resources for courses in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, known as the STEM subjects. It will be shown how pupils are to learn about the benefits of spaceflight and earth observation for society and the environment, while at the same time discovering the uniqueness and vulnerability of our planet. Last but not least, the paper addresses the question of how earth observation can be harmonized with the everyday school curricula in the light of problem-based learning. Hence, witnessing geospatial analyses turn into experience and enter real understanding.