The date was 23^rd May 2011 and the shuttle Endeavour is attached to the International Space Station. No photograph had ever been taken of both shuttle and ISS together. That is until Paolo Nespoli, a European Space Agency astronaut took the following image from a departing Soyuz TMA-20. The Soyuz landed in Kazakhstan later that day. On board were two other crew members that all had spent 159 days in space. There was Cady Coleman (NASA) and Dmitry Kondratyev (Russian cosmonaut and exhibition 27 commander)


Click the image to see the full majesty of the view
 

Ustream has a great set of channels. I tend to watch the Nasa HD ones. They have just added a superb one. It is the ISS HD Earth Viewing Experiment.

Click on the image to see the live camera views

The channel has been active since the end of April this year. It comprises of a number of earth facing cameras mounted externally to the payload system. There a ... Read more »

Space X is a organization that the great Elon Musk created with a philosophy I share -

‘Space X was founded under the belief that a future where humanity is out exploring the stars if fundamentally more exciting than one where we are not. Today Space X is actively developing the technologies to make this possible, with the ultimate goal of enabling life on Mars’

Now I will explore Elon in more detail on a later blog as he is one of my inspirations. If only more pe ... Read more »

Warning this blog post contains some spoilers not to mention my views on a terrible movie!

Nasa, Roscosmos, Space X and the European Space Agency have had incredible successes and most suffered through learning from terrible mistakes. All have done so in the glare of public life. It has helped harmonise warring countries in a mutual goal to live and learn in space. Following this progress I have only the greatest respect for what has been achieved.

Now, through Nasa TV, you can watch live lau ... Read more »