Space – the final frontier
Author: Adrian
Its been active in the skies these last few days. The International Space Station is once more visible in the skies at night, and as it nears completion is becoming ever more visible – to the point now that a pass during the day may be visible too. This week I’ve attempted (and failed miserably) to get some shots of the ISS passing over Milton Keynes – Tony Crowe was rather more successful and his picture can be seen here.
On top of that NASA have been attempting to launch the Space Shuttle Endeavour to the ISS for another mission to install part of a Japanese lab. Monday and Tuesday the missions were scrubbed with 9mins left on the countdown clock, but last night was successful and Endeavour successfully launched from the Kennedy Space Center at 23:03 UK time for her 16 day mission.
We watched the launch on NASA TV, and I happened to notice that the trajectory of Endeavour would put her somewhere near the UK. Working on nothing more than a hunch we wandered out into the back garden at about 23:20 and looked west…
…and immediately spotted two bright fast moving dots on the horizon. One was bright white and heading roughly west to south-west, the other had a much more orange tint to it and wasn’t moving as fast and moving away. Both dots were visible intermittently, probably due to cloud and we lost sight of them after about 30 seconds.
The bright white dot was Endeavour, we are certain. And that makes the orange one the external fuel tank, which had disconnected a few minutes before and would have been dropping back into the Earth’s atmosphere where it would burn up.
We saw Atlantis launch from the Kennedy Space Center in October 2002. We were along the banks of the Banana Creek River on the KSC property, about 7 miles from the launch pad. That was an awesome experience, and one we hope to be able to see again before the Shuttle’s reach the end of their service life. But to see the Shuttle pass over Milton Keynes just 20 minutes from blast off at Kennedy – now that was special.
