I just took this amazing photo of an ISS and STS-127 pass (the space shuttle is docked); 362 seconds exposure. The pale line above the shuttle track is an airplane. Unfortunately it was a little bit cloudy. In the top right corner you can recognize parts of Ursa Major.
Spaceflight is something really fascinating for me ever since childhood. So we decided to drive down to Cape Canaveral for the Space Shuttle Launch STS-119, scheduled for Wednesday, March 11th. Around 30 minutes before we arrived we saw on a highway information panel that the shuttle launch was canceled. What a bad luck!
Anyway, after we checked in at our motel, we drove over to the place in Titusville where we were supposed to watch the shuttle launch. We just arrived in time for an awesome moonrise! After great dinner and some walk in Titusville we headed back to our motel.
Next day we spent pretty much at the Kennedy Space Center. We started our tour at the Rocket Park and got right afterwards on the bus tour to the Shuttle Launch Pads, the Saturn V Center and the ISS Assembly Buildings. We also did the shuttle launch simulator and had a look at the shuttle model at Shuttle Plaza.
Late afternoon program was hanging out on Cocoa Beach. After dinner (and some Starbucks coffee) we started our way back to Atlanta. Basically we drove 1150 miles for a three-minute-thing that didn’t happen. But it was a great trip! We had fun and I am impressed by spaceflight more than ever!
We ended up watching the Shuttle launch this evening on NASA TV.
The last thing on my amazing journey over Christmas was to visit the Udvar-Hazy Center of the Air and Space Museum at Dulles International Airport. The reason because I wished so much to go there was that the Space Shuttle prototype Enterprise is exhibited there. NASA used this shuttle to test whether it is airworthy or not as the shuttle is optimized for space and not air operation.
Other planes exhibited there are the Concorde, the “Black Bird” and several planes from World War II.
