Braised Lambchop
a nurse trying to work while suffering with chronic pain - she rambles a bit

Everyone knew that Discovery was going to land today, if not in Florida at Edwards AFB in California. It's going to be California, because there are thunderstorms off the Atlantic coast today.

Because both Kennedy Space Center landings were waved off this morning, Discovery's last orbit before re-entry crossed right over the lower 48 states.

NASA helpfully provides a way to find out if the International Space Station or the Shuttle or one of several satellites might be sighted from your location. There's a Java applet as well as an HTML version, and the Java applet works fine for me in Tiger. Input your location (my city was in the dropdown menu, and you can choose lat/long also), the orbital body you're tracking, and hit 'next sighting.' The asterisks mean that the object will be in the visible field. Easy as pie.

So, about 20 minutes ago, after determining from the applet that Discovery might be seen during this orbit, I went outside in my front yard to look. And sure enough, right on time at 0527, Discovery came zooming into view at 17,000 miles per hour almost directly overhead. It faded off into the eastern sky in less than 3 minutes.

Just a moment ago, Mission Control gave them the 'go' for the deorbit burn, which means they're committed to re-entry. I saw Discovery launch at sunrise in 1999, and now I've seen her over my head just before sunrise. I'm going to get to a landing someday.

There's nothing simple about this foam problem no matter what you read, and there are still some lessons to be learned from the Shuttle program that can't be learned by sending robots. Robots are cute and all, but if we thought the same about space travel as our ancestors thought about ocean travel, I'd be living somewhere in England. Exploration demands risk, and it demands human observation.

Welcome home to Discovery. And to the spirit of Columbia.