It’s time for LANDINGSPAM. All STS-127, ALL POST. (Landing occurred this morning, by the by.)

Solar Transit of ISS/Shuttle, July 26, 2009. Photos by Thierry Legault (astrophoto.fr)

Another fantastic solar transit image by Thierry Legault, taken on July 26. (Hat tip to OnOrbit; found via Twitter.)

The crew of STS-127 has been busily installing Kibo, the Japanese module of the ISS, as seen above and below:

This image shows the Japanese Experiment Module – Exposed Facility as it looks from inside Kibo. The Japanese Experiment Module, or JEM, called Kibo — which means “hope” in Japanese — is Japan’s first human space facility and enhances the unique research capabilities of the International Space Station. Experiments in Kibo focus on space medicine, biology, Earth observations, material production, biotechnology and communications research. Kibo experiments and systems are operated from the Mission Control Room at the Space Station Operations Facility, or SSOF, at Tsukuba Space Center in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, just north of Tokyo.

Above: one of the fisheye launch tower shots, which are always fun.

Below: the prettiest picture. Which happens to be the smallest on the post because it’s horizontal. I have linked to the detail page so you can get a bigger version if you want (and why wouldn’t you, really?)

I had a third image picked out last night, but sneaky devils! KSC added more as I slept. So instead I give you this, which is a much better one:

Five scrubs later, space shuttle Endeavour awaits its sixth launch attempt this afternoon at 6:30 EDT. STS-127 will hopefully be in the air by the time I get home today….

In case you were wondering why STS-127 did NOT launch yesterday, this is why. [points up, points down]

This was yesterday’s NASA Image of the Day, which happens to feature the issue on Endeavour that scrubbed today’s launch:

In this image, taken June 14, workers on Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39A prepare to remove the 7-inch quick disconnect and flight seal from the Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate, or GUCP, on space shuttle Endeavour’s external fuel tank. Teams are removing the hardware to change out seals in the internal connection points. The GUCP is the overboard vent to the pad and the flare stack where the vented hydrogen is burned off. On June 12, a hydrogen leak caused the STS-127 mission to be scrubbed. Endeavour is scheduled to launch on its STS-127 mission on June 17, 2009, at 5:40 a.m. EDT. Image Credit: NASA/Tim Jacobs

I have always liked the sensation of feeling quite small while staring up into the night sky — a reminder, a sense of scale, I suppose — and the people in this picture give you an idea of just how big a Space Shuttle is. It’s not something you can really get through your head, looking at a shuttle-on-launch-pad picture. The picture is cropped and shown at larger size on the original page, and I encourage you to go there and look at that as well. (And download the highest resolution possible. Y’know, because I think you should. It will enrich your life to do so.)

It reminds me of one of my geology professors talking about field work; specifically, having a student climb up some impossible cliff, because “I need ya up there, for SCALE.” (The professor was photographing or sketching a formation, as I recall.)