Mission Pictures

Space Shuttle Discovery on her way into dock with the ISS. The ISS crew takes hundreds of pictures of the Shuttle as she approaches to look for any damage from ascent.

Here's another zoomed in picture of the Space Shuttle engine bell area. You can see the individual tiles and almost see the serial numbers printed in white letters on the black tiles.


This is a shot of the Shuttle payload bay taken by the Shuttle crew as they look out their aft windows. You can see the Canadian built Orbiter Boom Sensor System (OBSS) that they can use to look all around the bottom of the Shuttle to look for damage. A space walking astronaut can even climb out on the end of it if need be to do repairs on some hard to reach areas.


L: Shuttle Astronauts looking out their overhead windows. I'm not sure if this picture was taken by a space walking astronaut or from one of the ISS windows. R: Astronaut Bob Curbeam outside, holding on to the side of the ISS. This picture must have been taken during a night pass b/c, as you can see, his head lamps are on. They also have a camera on their helmet so we can see what they're doing. The ISS orbits the earth every 90 minutes so the crews see 45 minutes of night and 45 minutes of day every orbit.