Motherboard

The most expensive house (okay, thing) in the universe now has the best view in the universe. It better be: the window’s part of a new $400 million Italian-built node addition to the Space Station. Added bonus: as a cross between the windshield of a TIE-fighter and the Millennium Falcon, it will not only allow astronauts to twitpic us more awesome photos from their space phones, but finally give them a proper space to act out their Han Solo/Princess Lea fantasies before the shuttle program gets canned. Pew pew pew! (Peep video and photos and the view of the Sahara desert and the installation of the cupola, above.)

The mission’s lead space-station flight director, Bob Dempsey, described the first views during a pre-dawn briefing on the progress of the space shuttle Endeavour’s 14-day mission to the International Space Station: “The astronauts, who are accustomed to views you and I can’t really describe, were moved to tears when they looked outside the windows of the cupola for the first time."

Though NASA held a public vote to decide the name of the new 7-windowed node, “Tranquility,” that wasn’t actually the winner of the popular vote. That would of course be “Colbert,” which was the overwhelming choice of thousands of fans of the news tyrant. As a consolation prize, NASA dubbed the space station’s space treadmill COLBERT, or the Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill.

This week, the machine and other life support systems will be moved into Tranquility, which will serve as the station’s sweet new rec room. It may also serve as a lab for determining whether all that psychological testing astronauts and cosmonauts get can prevent shoving matches over the window seat.

When Motherboard visited NASA for the launch of Endeavor last week, agency spokeswoman Candrea Thomas said that while the windows would help the astronauts use the robotic arm on the space station, they were also a much-welcome step up from the little portholes the astronauts used to have. She confirmed that it was probably the best view in the universe. “And yes,” she said, “they deserve it.”