Monday, May 11, 2009

Liftoff

I should have said something about this earlier, but the live coverage of the Shuttle liftoff is on NASA TV right now.

At the moment, things look good -- they lifted off (close to) on schedule, they're airborne, and I'm now seeing a shot of the Earth from the butt end of the Shuttle as it prepares for an orbital maneuver burn. (All a hoax of course, but still pretty cool. ;^))

Good luck on this mission, y'all. We love our Hubble telescope, and we love our people doing cool things in space.

More from Phil Plait and Julianne Dalcanton.

Via JC: Good story from the NYT, including a cool graphic thing in the sidebar, that describes the mission's goals.

2 comments:

John Evo said...

I caught it all - NO THANKS to my favorite source! I just accidentally clicked on MSNBC.com and saw "Shuttle Launch - Live feed" and brought it up right as they ended the 9 minute "hold".

By the way, Hubble had one last great moment before the upgrade. Again, MSNBC.com has the latest photo of a dying star. Very cool.

bjkeefe said...

(*blushes*) ...

Yeah, sorry. I wish I had said something sooner. It was fun. I ended up watching that NASA TV feed for a couple more hours. Brought back fond memories of childhood, glued to the screen during Apollo coverage.

For others, here is a link to the picture that John mentioned, and here is a link to a relevant MSNBC story.

Video coverage of launch starting here.

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