Texas Shuttle & Space Station Sighting? - Wild Texas Forums: Parks, Travel & Recreation

Shannon · 08-05-2005, 10:31 PM

Look up in the sky in the wee hours of August 6 and 7th -- if you're in the right locale and don't have cloud cover, you'll be able to view the Space Shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station (ISS) as they orbit overhead. The Space Shuttle will be undocking from the ISS in several hours, so by the 6th and 7th the two vehicles will be separated but both with be visible from certain portions of Texas, south Florida, and near the Mississippi River Delta.

Viewing times and other information.

SKYMAP & GROUND TRACK DATA FOR
-- DALLAS, TEXAS: Skymap & Ground Track

-- AUSTIN, TEXAS: Skymap & Ground Track

The Space Shuttle Discovery is coming home on Monday morning (4:46 AM Eastern Daylight Time), August 8th, landing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Shannon · 08-06-2005, 01:59 PM

If you're interested in viewing man-made space objects (satellites, including the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle, when its in orbit), bookmark the following website:
Human Space Flight - Realtime Data

One of the most useful pages on the site is this Sightings by City page.

Alchemist2000 · 08-07-2005, 07:26 AM

We saw it from north of Dallas!! :cool: There is a lot of thin cloud cover this morning. We could see no stars in the sky at all, only the planet mars (or at least we assumed it was mars since it was in the right place and there was nothing else). Even that was somewhat obscured. However, since the shuttle was to go near mars we thought we would wait it out. Sure enough, the shuttle came streaking across the sky. Wow, it moves quickly! Even with the clouds it was very bright and very obvious. Thanks so much for posting this.

Shannon · 08-08-2005, 03:19 PM

Awesome -- I'm glad you got to see it. I neglected to see it myself, but that's because I've been heavily following the live NASA TV coverage of STS-141 (Space Shuttle Discovery).

If interested, anyone can read my blog entries regarding the mission, as well as a walk down memory lane about my one week stay at U.S. Space Camp as a teenager, here: Geek Habitat: Spaceflight (my private website)

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