In Search of Atlantis
June 22, 2007
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I had always wanted to catch a shuttle landing. Unfortunately very few landings have taken place in California the last several years. The most recent landing at Edwards AFB was August 9, 2005 (Discovery, STS-114) but that was at 5:11 AM local time, almost a full hour before sunrise, so I doubt there would have been much to see. Some of my co-workers mentioned being awakened by the sonic boom that morning, but I even slept through that.
So when I heard of bad weather in Florida during the Atlantis STS-117 mission in June of 2007 I kept a close watch. Atlantis was originally scheduled to land at the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, June 21, but all attempts were cancelled that day due to inclement weather and they were going to try again on Friday the 22nd. I got up early Friday and went into the office and checked NASA's website. After the first landing window in Florida was waved off a little before 10 AM I took the day off of work and headed towards Edwards. I knew that they only had one more chance at Florida, and after that the next 3 opportunities would be at Edwards. I listened on the radio as I drove and at about 11 AM I heard that the other window at KSC had been waved off too, and that the shuttle was now schedule to land at Edward's at 12:49 PM local time.
I managed to get to the view site about 20 miles northeast of Lancaster just in time. I heard the sonic boom (actually there are two of them in rapid succession) just as I was getting my camera out of the trunk of the car. People started scanning the sky and pointing fingers. I picked up a white spec and took a couple of shots.
False alarm it was one of the chase planes.
But then the shuttle quickly came into view. It passed almost directly overhead.
I could only get off a few more shots as it touched down and rolled down the runway. You can just barely see the parachute deploying and then dropping to the ground as the shuttle comes to a stop.
And then someone said "Show's Over" and about a thousand or so people got back into a few hundred vehicles and everyone headed home back across the desert all at once.
I made it back to the office about 4 PM. In all it was 4 hours of driving round trip for what amounted to about 40 seconds of excitement. It happens very fast. I doubt that I will do it again, but it was cool to do it once and be able to say that I saw the shuttle land.