Space Station Plus Shuttle

Two hundred and twenty miles above Earth, in a beautiful echo of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Endeavour shuttle docks with the International Space Station. The picture, from the Soyuz craft, is the first time that the ISS has been officially photographed fully assembled, with a shuttle in its parking bay. It will also be the last. It took 13 years and $100 billion (£61 billion) to get all the subject matter in place but as family portraits go, this set was well worth the wait.

Unprecedented new images released by Nasa and the European Space Agency (Esa) capture the splendour of the International Space Station (ISS) 220 miles above Earth, with a space shuttle docked at its US-owned Harmony module.

It is the first time that the ISS has been officially photographed fully assembled and with a shuttle in its parking bay. It will also be the last. The shuttle shown is Endeavour, which flew its final mission last month, and only one mission remains as Atlantis is prepared for a launch next month.

The image came about only after weeks of negotiations between Nasa, Esa and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, because of the intricate choreography required to get all parties in the best position — and without the sun shining into the eyes of Soyuz Commander Dmitry Kondratyev.

The photographs were snapped through the window of the Soyuz by Paolo Nespoli, an Italian astronaut, as the Russian spacecraft performed a fly-around of the giant orbiting laboratory.

Like all good photographic models, the ISS even posed for its close-up. Once the Soyuz, piloted by Commander Kondratyev, was safely undocked and 600ft away, mission controllers in Moscow gave the order for the ISS to rotate 130 degrees to show its best side as it hurtled around the planet at 17,500 mph.

The pictures were taken on May 23 but took two weeks to release after Major Nespoli left the camera’s memory card in the Soyuz after it landed in the Kazakhstan desert later the same day. Officials had to wait for the craft to be shipped back to base before the card could be retrieved.

The $8,000 Nikon D3-X camera equipment that he used did not make it, however. It was jettisoned inside the Soyuz’s orbital module — which breaks away to shed weight as a matter of routine when the spacecraft descends — and was burnt up in the Earth’s atmosphere.