Atlantis Found

Here is something a bit different to kick things off again. This is OV-104, more commonly known as the Space Shuttle Orbiter Atlantis. This is how I saw her in February of this year in the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center. Atlantis' first flight was on October 3rd 1985. Over the next 26 years, the orbiter travelled to space and back 33 times, spending 307 days in orbit. Atlantis' last flight on July 8th 2011 was also the last flight of the Space Shuttle Program.

All the orbiters are currently being decommissioned to be sent to museums. Atlantis will not have far to go, just a few miles down the road to the space center visitor complex. This year during the decommissioning, the VAB has been opened to tours for the first time since the early 70s. It is the last chance anyone has of seeing an orbiter in their "natural habitat".

My first impression was that they are massive. Just fricking huge. After looking it up, it turns out that they are more than 120 feet from nose to tail, nearly 60 feet tall, and have a wingspan of almost 80 feet. When they were loaded for takeoff, they weighed 240,000 pounds. With the external fuel tank and the two solid rocket boosters, the weight that blasted off the pad was around 4,500,000 pounds. Just crazy to see all that weight rocket off into the sky at thousands of miles an hour.

With the end of the shuttle program, came the end of an era in human spaceflight. Currently, the only way for humans to make it into space is in a Russian Soyuz capsule, a tiny 3 person capsule with a design virtually unchanged since the late 1960s. No longer is there the ability to do complex servicing missions on satellites such as Hubble, nor to construct such a thing as the International Space Station. It was a sad day when the shuttle program ended, but now it is up to commercial companies to design and build the space program of the future.

Awesome Name for a Road

I know that it is not a picture of the sky, but I think it is awesome that there is a street in Cocoa Beach called Astronaut Boulevard. From just a few kilometers from where this photo was taken a rocket launched today. The Atlas V carrying the MUOS-1 military communications satellite launched today at 5:15 EST. This is pretty cool to me for many reasons, one of them being the fact that I have seen that very rocket out on the launch pad. It was due to launch the day after I visited the Space Center, but that day and the next the launches were scrubbed for weather. After rolling out to the pad again yesterday, it was successfully launched today.

Red Eye Flight

This is from Cocoa Beach in Florida. On the left is most of the Big Dipper, and just out of the frame is in fact the Kennedy Space Center. This 30 second shot happens to have an airplane in it.

On a different note, I took some pretty cool photos of the Orion Nebula tonight, I am going to play with them a little bit, and post them soon.

Palms in Paridise

Palms at Wakulah

After a day spent lying on Cocoa Beach, I spent some time lying on the beach at night. On the way back to the hotel, I found these palms overlooking the parking lot. I think this picture is pretty cool. It looks blurry, but that is just because the trees were blowing in the wind. The weird blue light on the right is from the pool.

I had a wonderful trip to Florida, including to the Space Coast and the Kennedy Space Center. I have many many pictures of all things space that I cannot wait to share. I saw rockets of all shapes and sizes, I saw an actual rocket sitting on an actual launch pad waiting to launch. I saw the pads where the shuttles flew from, I saw the shuttle Atlantis in her natural habitat of the Vehicle Assembly Building. Those are just a few highlights of my visit to Cape Canaveral, and I will talk about them later as I post the pictures.

In this we see Orion almost straight overhead lounging in a Cocoa Beach palm tree. It was neat to see the stars all in a different place because of the latitude. Over on the other coast of Florida where I spent most of my time the nights were a lot darker than I expected, lots of stars.