The Boeing Company began construction of the 14,515-kilogram (32,000 lb) research laboratory in 1995 at the Michoud Assembly Facility and then the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

[2] Destiny was shipped to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in 1998, and was turned over to NASA for pre-launch preparations in August 2000.

[5] First, the Shuttle SRMSS (Canadarm) was used to remove Pressurized Mating Adapter 2 (PMA 2) from Unity node's forward port to make room for the new module.

Destiny was "grabbed" by the robotic arm at 11:23, lifted out of Atlantis' cargo bay, and berthed to the forward port of Unity.

[2][3] It is made from aluminum and stainless steel, and comprises three cylindrical sections and two endcones that contain the hatch openings through which astronauts enter and exit the module.

Destiny has a 20-inch (510 mm) optically pure, telescope-quality glass window located in an open rack bay used primarily for Earth science observations.

[2][3][9] Station crewmembers use very high quality video and still cameras at the window to record Earth's changing landscapes.

Imagery captured from Destiny's window has given geologists and meteorologists the chance to study floods, avalanches, fires and ocean events such as plankton blooms in a way never seen before, as well as given international scientists the opportunity to study features such as glaciers, coral reefs, urban growth and wild fires.

[9] The eight rack bays are equipped with curtains that provide around 290 cubic feet (8.2 m3) of temporary stowage space when not occupied by experiments.

Seven additional racks were flown to Destiny in the Leonardo Multi-Purpose Logistics Module by STS-102, and ten more were delivered on subsequent missions.

Destiny can hold up to 13 payload racks with experiments in human life science, materials research, Earth observations and commercial applications.

Destiny also contains the Minus Eighty Degree Laboratory Freezer for ISS (MELFI), transported to the Space Station on STS-121.

It is a multi-spectral imaging system built and primarily operated by students and faculty at the University of North Dakota.

Its purpose is to take frequent images, in visible and infrared light, of vegetated areas on the Earth and promises to deliver a greater effectiveness for in-season agriculture applications research and operational decision support than current satellite systems such as Landsat.

Laboratory Science Window, has the "...highest quality optics ever flown on a human occupied spacecraft...", according to NASA, and can support taking Earth observations/images.