The Space Shuttle touched down safely today at 5:32 Eastern time, just 12 days 20 hours 44 minutes and 36 seconds after launch. It traveled 5,330,000 miles, which would be a lot cooler if it had ever reached more than a couple of hundred miles above the surface of the Earth.
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DISCOVERmagazine.com: Latest Articles on Space - DISCOVER Blogs: The Loom
December 22nd, 2006 at 3:53 pm
your link does not work. The first one
December 22nd, 2006 at 4:21 pm
Take the typo off the front of the URL - or click this link (hope that works now!)
December 22nd, 2006 at 4:42 pm
5.3 million miles… or about 1/20 of the distance to the sun. Whee!
December 22nd, 2006 at 4:43 pm
Fixed the link. Sigh.
December 22nd, 2006 at 6:12 pm
I should have asked them to swing by Denver earlier today and give me a lift.
December 22nd, 2006 at 6:24 pm
This was a pretty awesome result, to have landed at the preferred landing site. Especially after they lost one landing day due to the solar panel difficulties on the ISS, and lots of weather problems at both Kennedy and Edwards.. The White Sands landing strip was even activated to facilitate a landing today.. a place where only one shuttle has ever landed before. Great judgement on weather predictions allowed a Florida landing after all, thus preventing long delays before Discovery could go into overhaul. Pretty exciting, for those sitting on the edge of their chairs for every shuttle mission.
December 22nd, 2006 at 7:35 pm
With this present shuttle mission accomplished, will the space shuttle be repaired soon?
December 22nd, 2006 at 8:33 pm
30 million more miles and they would have made it to Mars.
On it’s closest approach anyway
December 22nd, 2006 at 8:50 pm
“With this present shuttle mission accomplished, will the space shuttle be repaired soon? ”
What do you refer to?
Anyway, glad to see the shuttle home again. And good to see the Florida weather didn’t make them land elsewhere, forcing a more costly piggyback ride home. True, not too much of an expense, but these days every penny helps.
Quite a way to end the year for the shuttle.
It was said this was supposed to be the toughest of the construction missions. Does this mean the remaining missions will be relatively easier?
December 23rd, 2006 at 7:12 am
Every successful mission brings us one step closer to a Hubble repair mission (The only really useful mission for the Shuttle!).
December 23rd, 2006 at 8:02 am
“It was said this was supposed to be the toughest of the construction missions. Does this mean the remaining missions will be relatively easier?”
No. This was toughest mission TO DATE. *diabolical laugh*
December 23rd, 2006 at 12:16 pm
I find it interesting that this mission has been described as the most complex ever. Maybe they meant the most complex ISS mission.
To be fair, I don’t know in any detail what was done - but the Shuttle mission that most impressed me was I think the last Hubble mission - changing the power system - which had never been designed to be changed on orbit.
At least the ISS stuff had always been designed to do what was done.
No criticism here, but I wonder if this is a case of ‘bigging up’ the latest mission while it is on everyone’s minds. I know they did an amazing job - and an interesting comparison to Cernan and the other Gemini guys who struggled so hard to do relatively trivial things before the art was learned.
Nic
December 23rd, 2006 at 2:04 pm
*Sigh* I was kinda of dissapointed that it didn’t land at white sands… I was getting ready to go see because White sands is only about 2 hours from where I live … Hmmm I was looking foward to seing a shuttle land
December 23rd, 2006 at 8:25 pm
i watched the landing on nasa tv, even heard the sonic boom (i was in the florida panhandle this morning). i thought it was interesting that nasa announced TWO mission elapsed times: one from launch until main gear touchdown; and one from launch to nose gear touchdown. there was, obviously, a several-second difference in the two times.
i heard it on nasa tv. it was official.
December 23rd, 2006 at 8:27 pm
i meant i was in florida yesterday morning. i was at the in-laws’, and the passage of time got all mushed-up and mangled.
December 23rd, 2006 at 10:24 pm
Kennedy? They land the shuttles in New York now? Oh, right - the shuttle.
(couldn’t resist)
December 24th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
I was at the visitor centre when the landing happened. It was very exciting, as everyone had been notified the shuttle was landing and about 800-900 people were crowded around the astronaut memorial to try to catch a glimpse of it landing. We got the double sonic boom, but unfortunately the wind was in the wrong direction so instead of flying almost directly over us, the shuttle landed from the North.
I also attended a presentation by a former shuttle astronaut earlier in the day (I forget his name). The expected slide show of his missions was presented, but when showing a photo of Indonesian bushfires from space he went into a rant about how global warming was not occurring, and if it was then it was not man-made. I was horrified that the representative of NASA would spout such blatent crap - being a foreigner (from Australia) I had always looked upon NASA as being one of the USA’s premier organisation, and now one of their astronauts was feeding crap to the public during a NASA presentation! A bit off topic, but can anyone advise me of an appropriate channel to make a complaint, or is this just another example of the politicisation of NASA by the Bush Administration?
December 29th, 2006 at 7:46 am
Indeed, Sir Bad. It is a pity it just flies up a wee bit into space and then orbits there for a while. It’s like building a massive manmade island … in your swimming pool.