You can't Photoshop this sh*t...
With the STS-119 mission to ISS complete, the station is now symmetrical and a whole lot more capable. Not to mention how gorgeous it looks now, sailing over planet Earth.
In just a few short months, the International Space Station crew will grow to 6 long duration astronauts (up from 3), assuming we can get the potty to work! This is a big step for the world's space programs, and hopefully the work we do in the coming years will help open up that frontier to commercial entities. By having commercial companies develop Low Earth Orbit, NASA (and ESA and JAXA and Roscosmos) can get back to doing what they do best, exploring and pushing back our boundaries! Ad luna, ad ares, ad astra!On an interesting side note, Stephen Colbert recently won an online voting contest NASA held to name the last permanent habitable module the US is launching to the station at the end of the year. Colbert beat out Serenity for the new name of Node 3. I think it is tragic that he won, but I also can't deny the amount of good publicity Stephen has given the space program, and national science programs in general. I kind of hope they choose to at least name the toilet after him, if not the Cupola (the Colbert Bump). In reality, the names are just publicity pseudonyms anyways. Us engineering type folk, and all the operations people just call the modules by their engineering names: Node 1, Lab, Node 2, FGB, JEM, etc. It is still nice to see such a public figure showing interest.
Get the rest of this amazing photography taken from the Space Shuttle Discovery here.
No comments:
Post a Comment