Shuttle Endeavour and International Space Station

On May 23 European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli captured this image of the shuttle Endeavour docked to the International Space Station from more than 600 feet away.

This was among the first pictures ever taken of a shuttle docked to the station from the perspective of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

It was taken on the last voyage of a shuttle, the Endeavor.

38 of the images can viewed and downloaded from http://go.nasa.gov/stationportrait (or http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/multimedia/e27depart.html)

Video of the departing Soyuz spacecraft:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?collection_id=14555

Image as highlighted on the Picture of the Day Gallery
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1969.html

Thanks to: A Different Beauty For Space from The Technium on kk.org: http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2011/06/a_different_bea.php

Shuttle Endeavour and International Space Station

Shadow of a Martian Robot

Explanation: What if you saw your shadow on Mars and it wasn’t human? Then you might be the Opportunity rover currently exploring Mars.

For more, see APOD: 2011 May 8 – Shadow of a Martian Robot.

Home from Above

From Astronomy Picture of the Day for 2010 November 15, this photo titled “Home from Above”. From that website:

Explanation: There’s no place like home. Peering out of the windows of the International Space Station (ISS), astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson takes in the planet on which we were all born, and to which she would soon return. About 350 kilometers up, the ISS is high enough so that the Earth’s horizon appears clearly curved. Astronaut Dyson’s windows show some of Earth’s complex clouds, in white, and life giving atmosphere and oceans, in blue. The space station orbits the Earth about once every 90 minutes. It is not difficult for people living below to look back toward the ISS. The ISS can frequently be seen as a bright point of light drifting overhead just after sunset. Telescopes can even resolve the overall structure of the space station. The above image was taken in late September from the ISS’s Cupola window bay. Dr. Dyson is a lead vocalist in the band Max Q.

Over on Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow passed along:

Madeleine Robins called this picture of ISS astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson watching the spin far below, “The perfect cover for the perfect unwritten/unread SF novel I wanted to read when I was thirteen.” Exactly right.

“Exactly right” is exactly right. It’s an amazing photo of beautiful subjects, and I wish I could be there, or as a close second-best, read a novel set in that amazing place.

via Boing Boing Astronaut watches the Earth from an ISS porthole: perfect cover for a nonexistent sf novel.