Photo of the Day: Endeavour at the ISS...

NASA / Paolo Nespoli

It was on this day a decade ago that an astronaut aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule took this image of the orbiter Endeavour docked to the International Space Station (ISS) during STS-134. With only one more flight, STS-135, left to go before the space shuttle program came to an end in 2011, NASA didn't want to pass up the chance to take long-distance photos of an orbiter docked to the ISS before that opportunity was permanently gone. That opportunity arrived on May 23, 2011...when European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli—who was heading back to Earth along with cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev and NASA astronaut Cady Coleman—snapped this picture from aboard their departing Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft. This photo was taken as the shuttle-station complex was orbiting above our planet at an altitude of 220 miles...with the three Soyuz crew members landing in Kazakhstan a few hours later, ending a 159-day sojourn in space.

Here's hoping that once the Gateway is finally orbiting above the Moon a few years from now, NASA and its international partners will take the moment to photograph the lunar outpost with Orion and other Artemis spacecraft docked to it from afar. That is all.