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I have an idea for a cool Earth-pointing amateur experiment that could be done through the cupola windows of the ISS. All of them. It would be simple (and not look like the first photo below).

Are there rough drawings of the cupola with approximate dimensions? It looks like it is a round window with six trapezoidal windows around it. I just need an estimate of the sizes of the round and trapezoidal windows, and the 3D offset and inclination of one of the trapezoids. It doesn't need to be very accurate, but right now it's hard to tell from wide-angle photos.

I've included some reference images below of the cupola as viewed from from inside and outside.

below: Astronaut Don Pettit and some cameras completely obscuring this view of the cupola aboard the ISS. From the Smithsonian article How Astronauts Take Such Beautiful Photographs in Space.

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below: Unobstructed but wide-angle distorted view of the cupola, from Popular Science. There are six, equally spaced trapezoidal windows, although it is difficult to tell in this image due to the fish-eye distortion.

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below: (From left) Expedition 40/41 crew members Alexander Gerst, Reid Wiseman and Max Suraev peer out of the cupola. From blogs.nasa.gov. There are more exterior views of the cupola in this question.

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2 Answers 2

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Here's a possibly-final spec sheet, dimensioned in millimeters:

enter image description here

I found another one on this page, but it appears to be a quite early design, and while it offers more dimensional callouts, they don't seem to be internally consistent with the diagram.

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There's a pdf here (may be largely redundant to the other answer).

This is a crop from it: enter image description here

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    $\begingroup$ Actually by looking at drawings with different levels of detail, one can get a better idea what's going on beyond just the basic numbers. Thanks for the post! $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Jun 18, 2017 at 19:37
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    $\begingroup$ Yours is labeled 2.0 and mine 1.1; they look slightly different around the (docking collar?) area but are compatible in dimensioning. (What the hell is that 40º angle anyway?) $\endgroup$
    – Russell Borogove
    Jun 18, 2017 at 19:39
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    $\begingroup$ My only guess is that it's the angle to the grapple fixture pin. $\endgroup$
    – Organic Marble
    Jun 18, 2017 at 20:10

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