Mt Whitney Zone Forums The Chat Room Discovery's Last Flight

Sailing into fair winds on it's her final historic voyage.

- NASA commentary.

Replays are running on NASA TV.

Are all the shuttles female?

Thank you for posting the launch, I forgot to set my alarm. My cats kept me up all night so I don't think I would have woke to an alarm if I had set it.

Bummer, why didn't I think of having Bulldog call me at 4:30 a.m., that would have been the answer to getting me up in time for the launch. Heck, Bulldog could have given all the West Coast WHA members a wake up call. This is a very good reason to have an East Coast friend.

The shuttles are space ships. All ships are female.

You know, they hide their bottoms, head for the buoys as soon as they reach harbor, and so on.

Good point. I'll have to remember that out here in Ohio (Eastern Time Zone).

wagga - I'm laughing at the all ships are female stuff. Very funny!

CaT

More photos of the shuttle launch from a commercial flight at the washingtonpost.

Ever since the Wright Flyer it has been considered prudent for airmen to walk around the craft, looking for problems. This is a another way to do it.

NASA found some damaged tiles. A spacewalk to repair tiles in orbit is a possibity. More here.

RIP Spirit. NASA finally stops radioing Mars rover Spirit.

"It's all over now for Spirit, the lonely Mars rover stuck fast in a patch of crusty Martian sand.

After a brilliant five-year career gathering evidence that the cold and arid planet may once have been warm and wet, Spirit fell into the trap two years ago, and then its radio fell silent on March 22 last year."

More here, with pictures!.

Shuttle Crew Prepares to End Mission

"Commander Mark Kelly will fire Endeavour's engines at 1:29 a.m. to slow the orbiter enough for it to fall out of orbit and begin the last leg of its trip, concluding with a touchdown on runway 15 at the Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility at 2:35 a.m."

So, touchdown at 11:35 WZ time. Lynn-a-roo won't have to get up early!

New Toy!



You can download it here. It needs Google Earth, but we all have that - right?

The landing blog is here.

If the Google Earth toy freezes, just close/save/start up again.

And NASA TV is up & running.

And, right now, Atlantis is being moved out to the launch pad.

Picture perfect landing... fabulous! Welcome home Endeavor....

NASA sets the date for the last Atlantis launch. The very last Shuttle launch.

Atlantis and Crew Prepared for July 8 Liftoff.

I was hoping that our Space and Science Center down here in San Diego would have a special viewing event for the launch. Several years ago (25 or so) they had a special viewing late one night for the Voyager flyby of one of the further planets (I was thinking it was Mars, but wrong... and looking at the timeline for Voyager II Jupiter and Uranus are to early in my life to have been remembered... I remember that it was shortly after the Return to Flight by the Discovery after the Challenger disaster.. so it must have been the flyby of Neptune in 1989)... anyways... the Space and Science Center had monitors set up all over the place inside the museum and recieved a "live" feed of the images sent back from Voyager... I was really hoping they'd do something for the Atlantis Launch... but.. their official word today is:

"As the launch is at 8:26 am local time, and the museum doesn't open until 10:00, we won't be doing anything"...

Atlantis countdown is under way.

Engineering Review Board Meeting Ends With Decision to Continue With Launch Preparations. Details here.

"As engineers prepared to move the Rotating Service Structure away from Atlantis, a severe thunderstorm passed overhead, delivering rain and lightning that produced two strikes near the launch pad."

Here is the NASA TV link.

And CNN's take.

atlantis deep zoom:

another view



there are more angles on the site when you open it up via this link and look at the related stuff below:

Atlantis photosynths

http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv for live HD video coverage