There’s lots of interesting media stuff out there about the NASA’s Shuttle Programme as it draws to a close. Interestingly enough they’ve only just got an image of the Shuttle docked to the ISS after all these years. Pics are on NASA’s site. I guess it never dawned on me that this would be hard to get – but you can’t just slip out the back door of the ISS and take a snap of the whole thing!
The pictures where taken by Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli ‘as he left the International Space Station in May in a Soyuz capsule to return to Earth’ (originally from the BBC).
Now I’m not really a space nerd, but the space shuttle first launched when I was a kid and I remember watching the Challenger disaster on Newsround in shock. I had models & toys of of the Moonraker Shuttle (whatever happened to those Dad?) during my ‘James Bond’ phase (my early, impressionable days of cinema!).
The Shuttle was something that captivated me as a child and it’s wierd that it’s ending.
There is another Ironic Echo here though: Nespoli left on a Soyuz. He has a pretty cool (and very unique) Flickr page as well which in includes pictures of it – visually it hasn’t changed since it was first launched.
My Dad took a school trip to Russia in the ’80s (I’m sure there’s a longer story there) and be brought back an Airfix-style model of the Soyuz. So long before the ISS started being built, Shuttle and Soyuz came together in by bedroom!
OK, techy diversion almost over. I found this link about the most expensive cameras ever sold. Mad stuff.
There’s a NASA connection here too: amongst the rare Leicas are some Nikon and Hasselblad cameras built for NASA. The commentry one of the Hasselblad’s states that ‘most of them were left on the Moon. Only their backs found their way home.’ So once Virgin works out how to get tourists to the Moon, there’s a little reward waiting for the first to make it back there!