Astronauts supplied the International Space Station with a new logistics module; tested tools, technologies, and techniques to refuel satellites in space; and collected old equipment.
The twin cities of Sault Ste Marie straddle the border of Canada and the U.S. and lie amidst the lakes and islands that separate Lake Huron and Lake Superior.
Astronauts on the International Space Station snapped this photograph of the volcano in Eritrea just months before it erupted for the first time in recorded history.
The Ar Rub’ al Khali, or Empty Quarter, covers much of the south-central portion of the Arabian Peninsula and is the largest continuous sand desert on Earth.
This astronaut photograph highlights two river deltas along the southwestern shoreline of Lake Ayakum, near the northern boundary of the Tibetan Plateau.
Astronauts on flight STS-1 captured this view of the Tigris and Euphrates through a viewport on the space shuttle during its first flight in April 1981.
The Shebelle River has its headwaters in the Ethiopian Highlands, and transports water and sediment 1,000 kilometers to the southeast across Ethiopia and into Somalia.
In these astronaut photographs from the ISS cupola, two distinct cyclonic vortices whirl within an area of low pressure that spanned the Pacific coast from southern California to Vancouver Island.