Monday, November 16, 2009

A cloudy shuttle launch

I wandered outside today to catch the launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis. It is NASA's last shuttle flight of the year and one of only six remaining. The shuttle will return to Earth the day after Thanksgiving, bringing home a seventh astronaut who has been living at the space station since the end of August.



I figure since there are only a handful of launches remaining I should try and photograph as many of them as I can. Wouldn't you know that today there were two big fat clouds right between us and the shuttle? So typical of my luck. I only got a couple of glimpses of it between the clouds - even the rumble of the rockets was quite muted today. But I'll take this anytime considering most of the rest of the world will go a lifetime and never see one.

(If you'd like to see more pictures of shuttle launches from our neck o' the woods, click here)

4 comments:

Kelly said...

Are the discontinuing the program down there? Is that why there are only a handful more launches?

Chris said...

I've never seen one. Always wanted to though.

Kate and Crew said...

Kelly - yeah the closure of the shuttle program has been a big politcal drama since the Bush administration. It's a done deal though - it's on its way to being permanently closed and all the shuttles will be retired soon. They're going back to rockets like back in the '60s, but these rockets will be much bigger... they had some airplane-type things that they were going to build similar to the shuttle, but I think they got scraped due to cost or something?? Lots of lost jobs over at NASA though.

Chris - it's very cool to go to the coast and witness one close up. You can feel it, hear it and see it. Awesome.

Corner Gardener Sue said...

How cool to capture a photo of the shuttle! I love your photo of it coming out of the cloud! Awesome!

I hope your cat heals quickly. Poor guy!

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