Monday, July 17, 2006

Welcome Home, Discovery

At 9:14am today the shuttle Discovery made a flawless touchdown at the Kennedy Space Center, ending a successful mission. After an incident free launch the crew of the Discovery docked with the International Space Station where they conducted three spacewalks and resupplied the station. Two of the astronauts who went up with Discovery stayed aboard the ISS, and will remain there for the next six months. If all goes well, Atlantis is slated to launch as early as August 27, and will carry a new piece of the ISS, hopefully getting the construction of the station back on line so that it can be completed before the fleet of shuttles is retired in 2010. It is a good day in the space exploration community.

To infinity, and beyond!

Marius

1 comment:

Unknown said...

On a clear day yes. Unfortunately when Discovery launched there were too many clouds here in Tampa. I used to watch the launches from home when I lived in South Florida, and it was just a tiny point of light in the sky. One time there was a night launch scheduled for 7pm, so when I got off work at 5 I got in my car, drove two hours North, parked in a strip mall a few miles across from the launch pad(I could see the lights on the gantry tower) and when the shuttle launched it was the most spectacular sight. And for the first time I heard the engines. It was awesome. Unfortunately the piece of crap disposable camera I had didn't work, so none of the pics I took came out.