by NASA 41-D Mission Crew: NASA 41-D Mission Crew

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Scenic lookouts like this one are the privilege of an elite few, including astronaut Mike Mullane, who was on board the shuttle Discovery in September 1984 when a crewmate snapped this photo 184 miles above Earth. The orbiter's tailfin points to the Pacific Ocean. "Since the autopilot was holding the shuttle with its top to the Earth, I now had the planet in my face," writes Mullane in his memoir, Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut, due out this month. "In all my other life experiences speed meant noise. Now I was traveling at nearly 5 miles per second and there was only silence. It was as if I were hovering in a balloon."