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Space shuttle Endeavour, intend primed for your wide shot.

NASA's International Space Station assignment managers on Friday (May 19) authorised a organisation to picture expanse shuttle Endeavour patch it is ease docked to the expanse send from the appearance of a outgoing Slavonic spacecraft.

"We have what I constituent a unequalled opportunity," said Kenneth Todd, chair of NASA's expanse send assignment direction team. "We, as a community with 100 percent consensus, authorised this change to the baseline to go add this picture documentation duty as conception of the 25S [TMA-20] undock." [Video: How the Shuttle-Station Photo Op Works]

Soyuz TMA-20 is regular to yield the expanse send at 4:23 p.m. CDT (2123 GMT) on Monday, May 23, to alter Roscosmos cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev, NASA traveler Cady Coleman, and dweller Space Agency traveler Paolo Nespoli home to Earth after fivesome months in space.

As they depart, rather than directly leaving the neighborhood of the station, they power disrupt to earmark Nespoli to advise to a pane in the Soyuz surroundings power and picture the shuttle-station complex.

"They power backwards discover to most 200 meters," explained send grace director Courtenay McMillan. "You power wager they are a lowercase bit above the rate vector, above the station, and that is to ready the sun discover of the pilot's [Kondratyev] eyes."

"After they intend to the station-keeping saucer a few transactions later, ISS power begin a 130-degree maneuver. They power be agitated at 0.2 degrees per second, so it power verify most 15 transactions and it power basically alter the full stack around so that we intend a lateral analyse and a really beatific analyse of Endeavour," McMillan said.

Nespoli power have most 15 transactions to verify ease photos and video using digit cameras before he power vanish their accumulation cards, climb backwards into the Soyuz's descent module, seal the reproduce to the surroundings module, and convey with Kondratyev and Coleman to Earth and a construction in Kazakhstan.

Meanwhile, Endeavour's gathering power be good insensible ... or not.

"They're regular to be asleep," McMillan said. "We're not asking them to do anything differently than what they are regular for but there are a couple of fairly gently unexploded days around that, so there is a existence they power intend up. That's all discretionary." [Photos of Endeavour's STS-134 mission]

"They don't need to [be awake], there's no requirement for that and we're not going to ask them to," she said.

Once the Soyuz gathering and the cameras' accumulation game are on the ground, NASA and Roscosmos power work unitedly to release the images as presently as possible, perhaps as presently as the mass day.

NASA had hoped to hold a kindred picture op in March, when the shuttle Discovery was docked at the expanse station, but Slavonic expanse officials passed on the intent because it would have required an unexpected Soyuz undocking and redocking.

The picture of Endeavour at the expanse send was prefabricated possible because of the shuttle's start was suspended by digit weeks. That placed Endeavour at the send during the already planned Soyuz undocking to convey the Expedition 27 gathering to Earth.

While acknowledging there was whatever field value to the imagery, character said the photographs were important as a instrument to the send and shuttle for future generations.

"I would same to think that they'd countenance backwards on their story and countenance backwards at what we realised between these digit very, rattling super programs and the profession and the field that went into making the expanse shuttle do what it has finished for this land ...  and wager that it was quite a feat to go do this with the profession we're handling with in this portion timeframe," character said.

For a video of the shuttle-station picture op organisation and daily updates on Endeavour's STS-134 mission, meet collectSPACE.com's STS-134 Flight Day Journal.

You can follow collectSPACE on Twitter @collectSPACE and editor Robert Pearlman @robertpearlman. Copyright 2011 collectSPACE.com

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