Welcome Home

NASA geek that I am, I’ve worn myself out trying to follow the journey of Discovery. Any time there is a hint that the Shuttle may come to California I pay careful attention. Several years ago we had a fun time dashing out to the high desert to see the Shuttle come home to Edwards, and when the possibility arose that Discovery might have to divert here, I went back to my old tricks.

I watch NASA TV habitually when the Shuttle is up anyway, but our local cable access station only shows it between 10 pm and 7 am (PT), regardless of what is happening. Since the astronauts work on a different “day” schedule, there is usually something interesting happening, like historic spacewalks and repairs to the orbiter, when the feed abruptly shuts off and we are returned to footage of old city council meetings. (That’s okay; NASA TV is on the internet!)

Since most of the crew’s work is at night in our time zone, I end up watching hours of very quiet footage of the earth passing by, or the tracking map from Mission Control in Houston, when the orbiter is preparing to come home. In this instance, because there was a possibility that the Shuttle could come to California, I needed to pay attention to what the mission bosses were concluding about the Florida weather. Unfortunately, those decisions came very late at night here.

How would I know when to pay attention? By examining the landing data sheets. They describe, down to the second, the eight or nine major milestones the Shuttle will reach from de-orbit turn to touchdown, with speed, time and elevation data provided. For this flight, there were six different landing scenarios, two each in Florida, California and New Mexico, over a span of four potential orbits.

So, my activities last night consisted of staying awake until the first opportunity to land in Florida was scrubbed on orbit 217, then leaving the TV so that I could wake up randomly to hear Mission Control advise that the second Florida landing opportunity would also be scrubbed on orbit 218. With a sleepy smile, I turned off the TV and set my alarm for 4:30 (of course, I knew without looking that touchdown would be at 5:11 following orbit 219; because the weather was good, there would be no need for a landing on orbit 220).

I woke up at the appointed time, with the shuttle just beginning its nose-high decent through the atmosphere. There were unspoken anxious moments as the orbiter progressed through its speed-shedding S-turns, with the narrator once saying only that Mission Control had confirmed data acquisition from the orbiter. Looking at the map on the screen, it became clear that the Shuttle had progressed closer to the landing site than Columbia did, which mean that it had made it through the maelstrom of reentry.

Because the Shuttle would pass between Oxnard and Ventura in excess of 55,000 feet, there was a chance it would be visible from home (we sometimes see propellant trails from rockets launched at Vandenberg, twice as far away). Unfortunately, trees on our street block the view to the west, so an eyeball view was not to be. We didn’t escape the sonic boom, though, which was thrilling by what it represented: the bird was over Edwards, less than four minutes from the ground. The double boom, and the rumble that followed, also provided tangible proof that it was, in fact, here.

Landing at night is somewhat anticlimactic, as only the infrared cameras can see the orbiter until it flies through massive spotlights aimed at the approach end of the runway. Still, it was a perfect landing, and a beautiful thing to see.

Edwards expressly warned on its website that the base would not be open to the public for viewing the Shuttle as it landed. I suspect it will not be opened for viewing of the orbiter now that it is down either. Too bad. It’s an amazingly capable yet shockingly fragile instrument of national pride and human capability. If you have the chance, go see the Enterprise, the original test Shuttle, at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at the Dulles airport outside Washington DC. Even better, find a way to see the Shuttle in action.

I need a nap.