Welcome Home, Astronauts

Space shuttle Atlantis landed safely on May 24th at Edwards Air Force Base at 11:39 EDT (10:39 Central).  I wasn’t able to watch the landing because I was preparing for my 9 year-old cousin to spend the entire day with us.  I’m glad to see the mission was successful despite setbacks in landing since Friday.

Welcome home, lady and gentlemen.  It was a noble and daring risk to take in the name of scientific discovery and in the spirit of American exploration.  Kudos.

Sadly, this will be the final shuttle mission to the Hubble space telescope.  After updating the equipment there with cutting-edge technology (which should remain so for about two weeks), NASA has no more plans to bring any of their remaining space shuttles to the telescope.  Presumably, there will be more advanced spacecraft and/or space telescopes developed in the future.

Please visit the NASA homepage for more information on this shuttle mission, as well as info on previous and future missions.  There aren’t many left, (the final missions will be in 2010!) so watch them live on NASA video when you can.

Today, while my cousin was visiting, he found an old, heavy, die-cast metal space shuttle sitting on a shelf.  It’s actually a transformer rip-off (not even a Go-Bot), and despite how unlikely it is that a covert giant robot would choose a space shuttle as its ‘disguise’ form, it was always one of my favorite toys.

People forget how incredibly excited we all were to watch the Challenger mission.  Space shuttle mania had hit the brains of every middle-schooler in the nation.  In 1985, the year before Challenger exploded, NASA had nine shuttle missions, the most ever in one year.  In fact, considering how often these ships have gone up and back, it’s amazing to think of how few accidents there have been.  Out of 126 missions, there have been only two disasters.  That’s pretty incredible, considering we’re firing off 240,000 pounds into space at 17,000 miles per hour.