Shuttle Reentry Over the Continental US

TheOtherChimeraTwin notes that the shuttle Discovery will land at Kennedy Space Center on Monday morning at 8:48 EDT. The craft will make a rare "descending node" overflight of the continental US en route to landing in Florida. Here are maps of the shuttle's path if is lands on orbit 222 as planned, or on the next orbit. Spaceweather.com says: "...it takes the shuttle about 35 minutes to traverse the path shown... Observers in the northwestern USA will see the shuttle shortly after 5 am PDT blazing like a meteoric fireball through the dawn sky. As Discovery makes its way east, it will enter daylight and fade into the bright blue background. If you can't see the shuttle, however, you might be able to hear it. The shuttle produces a sonic double-boom that reaches the ground about a minute and a half after passing overhead."

Comments

Mach _

[0100010001010011]

At first I thought those were March X and was going to congratulate NASA on conquering time travel.

Re:So fast, so dangerous

[BadAnalogyGuy]

You know what else has really bad aerodynamics and catches all kinds of drag in the atmosphere? Meteorites.

And your mama.

Re:Watch the touch down too!

[PopeRatzo]

I rewrote the nose wheel steering GN&C module in '89 and the stuff that makes landings "perfect" in '91.

Big deal. I just killed Zeus in God of War III.