Standard procedure for the Soyuz spacecraft he was riding in dictates that no extra weight can be aboard the descent module during reentry. By taking these photos, Nespoti didn’t just bid farewell to the Space Shuttle—after capturing the footage, he left his equipment aboard the orbital module, dooming them to fiery destruction in the Earth’s atmosphere.
When you see these images, appreciate their beauty, but know also that these pictures are worth a lot more than a thousand words––about $US20,000 more to be exact. [Pop Photo and PetaPixel]
Glad nobodies taxes paid for those cameras.
Why would they need 3 of em?
Redundancy maybe?
Space mission: $160M+ USD
Couple Of D3X's: $20,000 USD
What a travesty.
Sooooo... Why don't they just have a couple of cameras permanently up there on the ISS that anyone can use? Sorry, but this seems extremely moronic. Waste for waste's sake.
where to store them? its not like the ISS has much room spare. And if it did that space would cost a lot more than 20k.