The 30,000 Foot View:
(Actually, the 250-mile view…)
The best seats in the house are inside the real-life Millennium Falcon, aka the Cupola: a 360-degree, 7-window observation module aboard the International Space Station. The Cupola (Italian for “dome”) was launched aboard Endeavor in 2010 to conduct experiments, dockings, and observations of Earth. First conceived by Gary Kitmacher as a workstation for operating the station's Canadarm2 (pictured here), the Cupola’s elements were developed in California, New York, Brazil, and finally Italy & the European Space Agency from the 1980’s to 2003. (Photo: NASA)