Yesterday, the long dreamed about photo-op of capturing a space shuttle docked to the International Space Station (ISS) finally came true as a departing Soyuz capsule carrying 3 of the ISS crew members back to Earth just happened to overalp with a shuttle mission. Result: NASA finally got its picture of a shuttle docked to the ISS, which the shuttles almost single-handedly carried into space, module by module.
For the more than dozen years since the ISS has been in orbit, this is, surprisingly, the first overlap to missions to man's sole homestead in the final frontier.
And the best is yet to come.
Because this event was so big, NASA TV streamed the whole event live. During the broadcast, Endeavour was seen docked to the ISS as the Soyuz capsule backed away to start its return trip to Earth. Unfortunateky, the video that provided the frame grabs was not only low rsolution, but black and white, which means no color images of the most extreme contrasts: the life-giving Earth, the only planet in the universe known to support life, and the desolate blackness of space, with the ISS, man's only home in the heavens, precariously suspended by the thinnest of threads between life and death an an unforgiving universe.
The good news: now that Soyuz has landed, it is only a matter of time until the high resolution, full color still images make it to the world's press for all to see. Meedless to say, keep an eye here as I'll have them once they become available.
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