APOD: 2022 April 17 - Shuttle Over Earth

Good morning and Happy Easter, Rallypoint. Welcome to the April 17th Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD): "Shuttle Over Earth." I was working at NASA in 2010 when this picture came back from the International Space Station (ISS), and it found a place on my wall immediately. Looking through the APOD archives this morning, I was surprised to see it had not been published before...so now that error is corrected. You see a silhouette of the shuttle Endeavor as it approaches the ISS framed by the layers of the Earth's atmosphere (troposphere, mesosphere, and stratosphere). Is it just by accident that these thin layers of gas both sustain us and protect us from the ravages of space? I don't think so.