Goodbye Florida!

Shuttle's landed after a very successful servicing mission. Our hardware's been removed and shipped back to Goddard. That means it's time to pack up and head back to Maryland :(

Florida has been amazing! beautiful weather, beach in my backyard, space shuttles, per diem, surfing and seafood have all been great. i'm really gonna miss the area and all the people i've met down here. i really hope i get the chance to come back down here for future missions.

i put together this little slide show to reminisce...enjoy and thanks for following my blog!

BYE FLORIDA

Atlas V Launch

View from VPF stairwell. atlas is just to left of white building in center

Just before I left Florida, there was another Atlas V launch. They were launching a satellite called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and another thing called LCROSS. LRO is going to orbit the moon and take pics and info to, i believe, investigate landing sites for future moon visits. LCROSS is going to smash into the surface of the moon to help research in aging craters (i think).

Atlas V on right between lightening rods. white building is the rolling support structure that protects the rocket while on the pad.

anyway, we watched the launch from a fire escape of an abandoned processing facility next to ours. it was actually where they did the launch preps for the past HST missions. the funny thing about the building, is now that its pretty much abandoned, the fire escape is always inhabited by tons of vultures. they sit on the railings all day and wait for something to get hit by a car. problem with that is the railings are grosssssss. and it smells.

Vultures hiding in the tree after we scared them away. There were like 30 of 'em in there!

but it was a nice view from up there, here's some more pics and a movie of the launch!

Cool pics of volcano explosion

here's some pictures of a volcano erupting taken by the astronauts on the ISS


I've got some nice pics of another rocket launch that i'm gonna put up soon, so check back!

More Ferry Flight Pics

I got some more pictures of Atlantis' ferry flight from California to KSC from other people and from NASA. Enjoy!









i also got to see another Atlas V launch. I'll put those pics up soon too.

Hardware Removal from Atlantis

The shuttle returned safely to Kennedy and was rolled over to the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF). Once it was there, our hardware had to be disconnected from Atlantis' power supply and all our cables had to be tied up so our stuff could get lifted out of the orbiter and back into the Can.


I had to go in on a Sunday (boo) and tie up the cables after the KSC technicians demated the connectors. I got to use all the knots I learned in my height safety class (bowline knot, hitch knot, etc.) while hanging perilously over the shuttle in a little bucket. Here's some pics:

Looking to the back of the shuttle in the payload bay. Our hardware is all the orange things in the middle. We had to wear our bunny suits when working in there. LAME

That's me in the bucket! I got to ride around in it and finish securing all the harnesses

Me working...see, i actually DO work down here

Shuttle Ferry Flight

So the mission's over and the shuttle was supposed to land on Friday in KSC. Problem is, it has been raining there all week and will probably continue into the weekend. That's OK with me because if they can't land in Kennedy, they land in California which means 12 extra days at the beach!


Friday comes and goes and they wave off landing till saturday.


Wave off saturday too.


FINALLY...after almost a week of doing NOTHING (all EVAs were finished Monday and all our equipment was off) we finally get the OK to land in California. sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.

The 747 sucessfully landed in KSC and we decided to take a field trip to the landing facility to snap some pics of everything.

When we were snapping pictures, we were also getting eaten alive by dinner plate sized mosquitos. Need to remember the bug spray next time