Space shuttle Atlantis touched down on the Shuttle Landing Facility's Runway 15 today at 5:57 a.m. EDT. After 200 orbits around Earth and a journey of 5,284,862 miles, the landing at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida brings to a close 30 years of space shuttle flights.
The NASA nerds and I watched the Apollo 13 movie yesterday and it has just really compounded the emotional value of this day for me. I want so badly to be part of an era of exciting and innovative human space flight, and now the possibility of U.S. human space flight, at all, is unknown. Perhaps I will get to be part of the next big era--Mars, an asteroid, an observatory or settlement on the Moon--I guess we'll have to see...
Space shuttle Atlantis lands for the last time. Image from STS-135 Special Coverage, www.nasa.gov.
No comments:
Post a Comment