Launch Day: At Last!
Monday, May 11th, 2009 09:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tourmalineSTS-125 has finally launched! About two-and-a-half hours ago, Atlantis finally lifted off on a mission which was originally slated for last August. All to make Hubble even awesomer than it's been in the past, which is pretty awesome, especially all the stuff it captured that made its way into my course materials.
So strange watching the launch preparations, how my heart seemed to thump louder the nearer we got to T+0. And a few seconds into the mission, there was commotion of voices followed by a general "never mind, it's OK" kind of chorus. Turns out a transducer wasn't doing what it should, but there's other stuff to work in its place. And because it's a different orbit to the usual (ie the ISS visits) the view of the Earth during ascent was different, you could see the brilliant blue Atlantic Ocean with the East Coast of North America in sort-of-green being left far behind. And the Launch&Ascent mission control team handed over to Orbit 2 team with the news that there wasn't any debris observed. Cool.
Unfortunately as I was at work till just before 5pm I missed the White Room and crew egress and comm checks :( but this evening I managed to miss (on purpose) Candrea Thomas, NASA's answer to Madeleine Bassett - she was on NASA TV about 20 minutes to launch, so I decided that was a good point to nip to the bathroom :)
I love how both Gregory Johnsons were involved - one is the Pilot, the other was launch & ascent CAPCOM. Thank goodness for military nicknames.
So strange watching the launch preparations, how my heart seemed to thump louder the nearer we got to T+0. And a few seconds into the mission, there was commotion of voices followed by a general "never mind, it's OK" kind of chorus. Turns out a transducer wasn't doing what it should, but there's other stuff to work in its place. And because it's a different orbit to the usual (ie the ISS visits) the view of the Earth during ascent was different, you could see the brilliant blue Atlantic Ocean with the East Coast of North America in sort-of-green being left far behind. And the Launch&Ascent mission control team handed over to Orbit 2 team with the news that there wasn't any debris observed. Cool.
Unfortunately as I was at work till just before 5pm I missed the White Room and crew egress and comm checks :( but this evening I managed to miss (on purpose) Candrea Thomas, NASA's answer to Madeleine Bassett - she was on NASA TV about 20 minutes to launch, so I decided that was a good point to nip to the bathroom :)
I love how both Gregory Johnsons were involved - one is the Pilot, the other was launch & ascent CAPCOM. Thank goodness for military nicknames.
