The best of show: Stunning photos and video of the 13-story station and its wing-like solar arrays gleaming against either the pitch-black vacuum of space or a cloud-speckled blue Earth.

"It just glistened. It sparkled like a jewel out there when it was against the blue background of the ocean," Altman said. "Its a beautiful sight, and we want to bring those photos back and share them with as many folks as we can."

Folks wont have to wait long.

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A thousand words

The astronauts started beaming back photos within hours of their high-flying departure, which took place as the shuttle and the station cruised some 240 miles (384 kilometers) above the Russian-Ukrainian border.

A view of the International Space Station from shuttle Atlantis shortly after undocking.

Standing at a cockpit control panel and gazing out overhead windows, Altman gently eased the 85-ton shuttle back away from the station to a point about 350 feet (106 meters) directly above the complex.

Then with a few short pulses from the shuttles 44 nose-and-tail steering thrusters, Atlantis began flying a double loop around the station that took almost two hours to complete.

The purpose of the so-called "fly-around": To shoot high-resolution photos and video of the station, focusing particularly on its newly arrived crew module and a Russian space freighter docked at the end of the outpost.

The idea was to document the condition of the new crew quarters - known as the Zvezda service module - and the Progress cargo carrier for earthbound engineers.

Mission Atlantis
Look here for complete coverage of space shuttle mission STS-106.

Launched in mid July after a two-year delay, the bus-sized Zvezda module doubles as a station command post and crew living quarters. The Atlantis flight provided NASA and its station partners with their first opportunity to conduct an extensive photo survey of the craft in orbit.

Altman, meanwhile, was dazzled by the way the service module looked during shifts between orbital day and orbital night - something which occurs every 45 minutes as the shuttle swings from the sunlit to the dark side of the planet.

"Watching the sunrise and sunset the way it illuminated the solar arrays on the service module was just phenomenal," he said.

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Watching Progress

The Progress arrived at the station in August, bringing with it some 1,300 pounds (585 kilograms) of supplies and equipment for the stations first full-time crew, which is due to take up residence at the outpost in early November.

The cargo carrier flew on new trajectory on its way to the station, exposing the spacecraft to a different thermal environment in flight. Russian engineers, consequently, asked the shuttle crew to pay particular attention to documenting its condition.

The high-altitude photo session lasted an hour and 48 minutes. Altman then fired shuttle thrusters in a so-called "separation burn" that propelled Atlantis out of the vicinity of the station and on its way back to Earth.

Launched September 8, the Atlantis astronauts spent a week working both inside and outside the station, which has doubled in size since the last visiting shuttle crew carried out a maintenance mission at the outpost in May.

What then was a 7-story station now is a tube-like 143-foot (43-meter) tower that is roughly the height of a 13-story building. It includes four wings: the Progress, the crew quarters, a Russian space tug and an American docking module.

And with some 8,800 cubic feet (264 cubic meters) of habitable volume, the 67-ton station is now about as big as a small but comfortable apartment.

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Room to grow

The sheer size of the expanded outpost is striking - particularly for those who have visited the station before.

"Its really breathtaking," said NASA astronaut Rick Sturckow, a pilot who helped link the first two building blocks of the station during a December 1998 shuttle flight.

Another angle on the International Space Station from shuttle Atlantis shortly after undocking.

"It looked really large when we just had two modules, and now that we have four pieces up there, its even more impressive."

In the coming year, the station is expected to expand at a rapid pace.

The first segment of the stations girder-like backbone, two giant solar wings and a U.S. laboratory are to be added during three shuttle flights between now and the end of January.

And if all goes well, the station by the end of 2001 will swell to the size of a three-bedroom house that has 1,800 square feet (162 square meters) of living space.

"Its going to really start growing - even exponentially - as we add more and more pieces," Sturckow said. "So its going to be quite a sight for crews as they arrive."

The first resident crew - William Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev - is scheduled to launch October 30 from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

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Open for business

And when they arrive at the station two days later, theyll find that the Atlantis crew has fully outfitted it for their planned four-month stay.

One more look at the International Space Station from shuttle Atlantis shortly after undocking.

In a matter of seven days, the Atlantis crew wired the new crew quarters for electricity and satellite television, put in an air conditioning system and set up a fitness center, a makeshift medical clinic and a high-tech toilet.

The astronauts also stocked the pantry with food and water, left a wardrobe of comfortable clothes and stowed enough supplies - laptop computers, printers, pens and pencils - to outfit a home office in orbit.

NASA officials, meanwhile, are ecstatic about the job done by the Atlantis crew, which includes five U.S. astronauts and two Russian cosmonauts.

"This mission is going down in the record books," said NASA flight director Wayne Hale.

The astronauts "went above and beyond the call of duty in preparing the station for the first expedition crew," he said. "It has just gone beyond everybodys expectations."