![]() Then someone must have released the emergency brake. Even from six miles away, on a bright Floridian afternoon, the glow was almost too intense to look at. And Atlantis was on her way, right on time.Īs the Shuttle slowly cleared the top of the launch gantry, the flames from her engines re-emerged from the exhaust cloud. Then the nose of the spacecraft slowly emerged from the billowing smoke, and she began to climb skyward. Suddenly, bright orange flames sprang from beneath Atlantis, followed instantly by a plume of brilliant white smoke.Ī few moments later, the booming roar of the Shuttle’s engines reached us, but by then she was already being engulfed in a cloud of smoke that glowed orange from within.įor a second or two Atlantis disappeared entirely. Then there were just 20 seconds!Īs the famous countdown clock continued relentlessly towards zero, we all crossed our fingers, hoping there’d be no last moment delays. We arrived there almost three hours before blast off, which gave Rich and Sue plenty of opportunity to work on a wicked case of sunburn (although that’s another story).īefore I knew it, there were only 20 minutes left until the scheduled launch time. ![]() Although still six miles from the launch pad, the Causeway was the closest point from which members of the public could watch a Space Shuttle launch. There we boarded a second bus, out to the NASA Causeway. ![]() We were collected by bus from our Orlando hotel before dawn, and ferried to the Kennedy Space Center. Before it was too late.Īnd on Friday May 14 th, 2010, we kept this promise. We vowed we’d make it back to Cape Canaveral to witness a Shuttle launch firsthand. And with the disappointment of missing Endeavour’s launch by such a small margin still fresh in our memories, we made ourselves a promise. Not long afterwards, we learned that the Shuttle program was being cancelled. So by the time Endeavour blasted off on Mission STS 123 the following evening, Rich, Bisckits and I had to be content watching on NASA’s website from our hotel room in Chattanooga, Tennessee. This afternoon Atlantis will roll in to the 52-story tall Vertical Assembly Building (VAB), and there, on Wednesday, it will be lifted and maneuvered into a vertical position to be joined with twin white solid rocket boosters and a giant orange external tank to become a full space shuttle.Although tempted, we simply couldn’t extend our trip on that occasion. The rollover holds emotional significance for the team of thousands of NASA civil servants and contractors who have worked on Atlantis, many for the whole of its almost 26-year life.Ītlantis' four-astronaut STS-135 crew - commander Chris Ferguson, pilot Doug Hurley and mission specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim - also showed up to mark the occasion. Today's maneuver, called "rollover" in NASA parlance, began at a building called the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) here at Kennedy Space Center, where Atlantis has undergone inspections and maintenance since landing after its last voyage, the STS-132 mission, in May 2010.įrom there, Atlantis traveled out on a giant 18-wheel transporter platform, where it paused to allow shuttle workers to take photos alongside it.
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