This story was updated at 10:49 p.m. EDT.
A picture
may be worth 1,000 words, but NASA has one worth $100 billion.
The
snapshot spotlights the International Space Station as seen by a camera on the space
shuttle Discovery on Wednesday. The shuttle's crew had just
undocked from the station after eight days of orbital construction to add
the last pair of solar wings to the outpost's starboard edge.
"That's
certainly a wonderful snapshot," the mission's lead space station flight director
Kwatsi Alibaruho told reporters late Wednesday from the Johnson Space Center in
Houston. "The picture I'm affectionately calling the $100 billion photograph."
The price
tag is the estimated total cost of the space station that senators gave to U.S.
President Barack Obama when he spoke to the astronauts yesterday. NASA has questioned
the estimate, so it's "a little joke we have in Mission Control," Alibaruho
said.
The station
is the largest manmade structure in space and the product of international
cooperation across 16 different countries. Its first segment launched in
1998. The latest - the new solar wings - can be seen as the last set on the left
edge of this image (or right end to the station). They launched aboard Discovery
on March 15.
With the
new solar arrays, which alone cost about $298 million, the space station
measures longer than a football field across. The new solar arrays double the
amount of power available for science on the station. The outpost is 81 percent
complete and weighs nearly 1 million pounds (453,592 kg).
Each of its
eight solar wings - four per side - have a wingspan of about 240 feet (73
meters). The space station can be easily
spotted from Earth by the naked eye.
The station
is currently home to three astronauts, one each from the U.S, Russia and Japan.
In late May, it is expected to double in crew size.
"It's really
just incredible...it's almost indescribable," Alibaruho said. "I just feel a
great sense of honor to be a part of it, and a great sense of pride in my team."
Dan
Hartman, head of the station's mission management team, said he has spent 15
years working on the international project and was amazed to see the outpost
now looking as only artist's illustrations have shown before.
"You always
saw it in the pictures, and you just wondered if we were ever going to get
there," Hartman said. "There's an extreme amount of pride in joy in seeing that."
Commanded
by veteran spaceflyer Lee Archambault, Discovery and its seven-astronaut crew
performed three spacewalks at the station to deliver the new solar wings.
They also helped repair the station's urine recycler and swapped out a member
of the space station's crew.
The shuttle
is due to land Saturday at 1:43 p.m. EDT (1743 GMT) at NASA's Kennedy Space
Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., to end its 13-day mission.
SPACE.com
is providing continuous coverage of STS-119 with reporter Clara Moskowitz and
senior editor Tariq Malik in New York. Click here for mission
updates and SPACE.com's live NASA TV video feed.
advertisement
