Image(s) of the Day: Step inside a space shuttle

Let's be honest — we’ve all wondered at least once about what it would be like to step inside NASA’s mission control facility in Houston, Texas, and we’ve definitely all wondered what it would be like to step inside a space shuttle:

Thanks to exclusive images being provided by Electronic Products editors, who are touring NASA's Houston-based Johnson Space Center with the winners of Littelfuse’s Speed2Design contest, you now have the chance to explore both the inside of a space shuttle and the mission control room for yourself, from its humble beginnings to the technological marvel it is today.

 Screens from original mission control

Here we can see part of what the NASA original mission control room looked like back in the Dark Ages of 1969. Somehow, this equipment is what first put man on the moon, and is the starting point for everything that NASA has become today.

Now, NASA has built more sophisticated toys, and the room looks like this:

 Mission Control decked out for Christmas

Here, you can see NASA technicians watching the feed from the International Space Station, which they are able to control live. Below are real-time images from the ISS, with NASA hard at work both in space and on the ground:

Real-time ISS Feed

Those aboard the ISS got there by hunkering down in a space shuttle, whose inside is very similar to the images taken of a retired shuttle below:

Inside of Space Shuttle

Want to see more from NASA? Check out this article on Robonaut, complete with video!