At 12:26p Tuesday, the space shuttle Discovery undocked from the International Space Station (ISS). At 9:20p, the pair presented a graceful duet of brighter-than-Venus dots silently gliding overhead. I guess the ISS didn't want the Shuttle to leave, since the space station appeared to be chasing it across the sky. Of course, the ISS will never catch up; the photograph proves it. The eleven-second trace for the Shuttle is 36% longer than the one for the ISS, vividly showing their relative speeds.
About 30 seconds later, both the ISS and Shuttle disappeared. Here is the trace from the ISS plunge into the darkness of Earth's shadow:
To see it larger, click on the image above. To see it full-size, click here.
The last time I saw the ISS and the Shuttle undocked, I was in downtown Cairo, peering between buildings, hoping my view was somewhat toward the southwest. This time was much better! :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment