Striking images of the International Space Station and space shuttles

These detailed images from photographer Roland Miller’s new book Orbital Planes offer a privileged peek inside NASA’s space shuttle programme

By Gege Li

Photographer Roland Miller

THESE intimate and detailed photos of space shuttles and the International Space Station (ISS) offer a privileged peek inside one of the biggest programmes in space flight.

They come from the new book Orbital Planes: A personal vision of the space shuttle by photographer Roland Miller (see cover below), published by Damiani Editore. It depicts spacecraft from NASA’s space shuttle programme, which flew 135 crewed missions from 1981 to 2011 using five spacecraft: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour.

The space shuttles were designed to provide backup for space travel and maintenance, including building the ISS, transporting cargo and launching, recovering and repairing satellites.

Miller started work on Orbital Planes as the craft were being decommissioned. The image above shows the launch of the STS-133 mission in February 2011, in which Discovery docked with the ISS. The trio of smaller images show: the airlock and hatch of the ISS as seen from Discovery, the ceramic tiles lining the exterior of Atlantis (to protect the shuttle from the heat of re-entry), and the commander’s console on board Endeavour.