Sunset: Journey’s End
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| Courtesy of NASA |
Layers of Earth’s atmosphere, brightly colored as the sun sets, are featured in this image taken by the STS-127 crew on the Earth-orbiting space shuttle Endeavour. This image was taken on July 29, 2009, one day before the shuttle landed, completing a 16-day, 6.5-million mile journey.
STS-127 was the 29th shuttle mission to the International Space Station.
Endeavour set sail on its 23rd mission with the Kibo Japanese Experiment Module Exposed Facility and Experiment Logistics Module Exposed Section. The facility provides a type of “front porch” for experiments in the exposed environment, and a robotic arm that is attached to the Kibo Pressurized Module and is used to position experiments outside the station.
The mission included five spacewalks and delivered Timothy L. Kopra to the station as a flight engineer and science officer and returned Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata to Earth. Hurley, Cassidy, Marshburn and Kopra made their first trips to space.
