First images of US spacecraft on ISS released

On June 7, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) released the first photos of the US spacecraft docked at the International Space Station (ISS).

This is an image of the US space shuttle Endeavour taken by astronauts on a Russian spacecraft last month.

A photo of an American spacecraft on the ISS. (Source: NASA)

Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli took photos and videos of Endeavour as the white spacecraft sat atop the ISS's expansive space deck as he and two colleagues aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft headed back to Earth on May 23.

NASA said that when the Soyuz was about 600 feet (183 meters) away from the ISS, Moscow mission control ordered the spacecraft to rotate 130 degrees. The move allowed Nespoli to take high-definition digital photos and video of the Endeavour spacecraft as it docked in space at the ISS. The photos and video were uploaded to the website www.nasa.gov.

The Soyuz spacecraft brought the crew, including Russian Flight Chief Dmitry Kondratyev, NASA astronaut Cady Coleman and Italian astronaut of the European Space Agency, Paolo Nespoli, back to Earth on May 24 after six months of research on the ISS.

The Endeavour spacecraft has been docked at the ISS for 11 days, its final scheduled space flight and the penultimate mission of the 30-year-long US space exploration program, which will end after the Atlantis spacecraft, scheduled to launch on July 8.

According to VNA