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Crew praises 'phenomenal' view from station's cupola
BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION
Posted: February 19, 2010


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Space station commander Jeffrey Williams and George Zamka, commander of the shuttle Endeavour, cut a ceremonial red ribbon late Thursday and declared the new cupola observation deck "open for business."


Credit: NASA
 
"Today, we are here in Tranquility standing above the cupola to formally open the cupola for use by other crews that will be here on the space station," Zamka said. "Arguably, mankind has been after this view for centuries, this perspective, this view of the world. And we finally have it, and we're going to take advantage and enjoy it."

"We on the station crew are especially happy to get this, to be able to enjoy this," Williams said. "I know for me personally it's a milestone that I will remember for the rest of my life."

He described the cupola as a "window on the world" marking the virtual completion of the International Space Station's assembly. He and Zamka then thanked the late Lacy Veach, an astronaut who participated in the cupola's initial design, and held up a container holding small moon rocks collected during the Apollo 11 mission and later carried to the top of Mount Everest.

"These moon rocks have had quite a journey and they will continue their journey for thousands and millions of miles in a very short amount of time," Zamka said. "They will be placed in the cupola as a reminder of man's reach and man's grit as they go out and explore."

Zamka then cut a ceremonial red ribbon and Williams said "the cupola is open for business! Let's take a look."

The combined shuttle-station crews then floated into the cupola one at a time to take in the view.

Endeavour's crew delivered and installed the new Tranquility habitation module and then mounted the cupola on its Earth-facing port. The seven-window cupola will be used as an observation deck and robotics work station, giving robot arm operators direct views of work sites and approaching cargo ships.

"It's so hard to put into words the view that we see out those beautiful seven windows," astronaut Kay Hire told reporters earlier. "It's (like) comparing a black-and-white analog picture to a super high-def color picture. It's just phenomenal what we can see out there. ... The most stunning thing I've seen so far is just some beautiful thunderstorms from above. It's really interesting to watch the way the lightning jumps from cloud to cloud far below us."

Endeavour pilot Terry Virts, making his first spaceflight, said all aspects of the experience have been "new and completely amazing."

"Getting to look out the shuttle windows and the station windows has been awesome," he said. "But when we looked out the cupola, it's impossible to put into words, but it took my breath away. We've only had a few opportunities to go down there because we have been busy inside doing work, but I think the favorite view that I've had has been watching a sunrise.

"At night, you can see cities if you're over land and then when you pass into the sunlight you get the blue limb (of Earth) and then it turns into pink and different colors like that and then when the sun pops up, it's like an instantaneous floodlight in your eyes, it kind of overwhelms you. But the view is amazing. You can sit there and ... perceive the entire Earth limb and you can really see the Earth has that round shape. It's just amazing."

Williams agreed, saying "to be able to see the entire Earth in one glance and see the entire limb of the Earth all the way around and see the spherical shape of the Earth is going to be new to us."

"Obviously, we've seen a lot of those segments of that view before, but only one segment at a time through a narrower field of view," he said. "We have taken a lot of photography up here, we will continue to do so. The cupola will offer us a very unique and new opportunity for photography in a new way, particularly with wide angle lenses, which we're already playing with a little bit to try to be able to share that experience with folks on Earth."

Spacewalker Robert Behnken said the view from the cupola rivaled and in some ways exceeded the view from a space helmet.

"The reason being you actually have time to look around through all the windows," he said. "Usually during a spacewalk, there's a fair amount of work to get done. ... There wasn't a lot of time for the sightseeing you might like to do out of a window like cupola.

"The other thing the cupola affords you is the opportunity to share some of those views with other people. We're really limited on the photography we can do during a spacewalk, but taking one of the HD cameras or some still photos inside the cupola is really going to allow us to share those beautiful sunrises and sunsets and Earth views in general with everyone on the ground."

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