I don’t understand how this picture was taken/put together. The shuttle must have taken several minutes at least to make the track in the photo, but the ISS, from where the photo/s were taken, had to have moved hundreds if not thousands of miles. Yet the earth under the shuttle’s track is sharp and clear, not blurred.
Is the picture the product of extensive manipulation/combination of many pictures taken from a moving vantage point?
I think the picture is a single image with a short exposure time. The shuttle entered into view from the bottom leaving behind a lingering trail of smoke in the upper atmosphere. The shuttle itself is at the tip of the bright spot near the top of the image.