Discovery Landing Pics

Discovery, with contrails, on approach for landing. Image credit: Jen Scheer

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OK, America. Where were you and your cameras Tuesday morning?? We wanted to post pictures from anyone who captured a view of space shuttle Discovery during its cross-country swoop towards landing. We did get one description from Spokane, Washington, and the few pictures we received — while wonderful — were taken from Kennedy Space Center. This image is from Jen Scheer (a.k.a @flyingjenny), shuttle technician at KSC, who regularly takes images from the space center, including a daily sunrise — check out her Flickr page, the images are wonderful! See more pictures, below, but here’s the description of Discovery’s pass over Spokane from UT reader Derek Buckley:

“Nearly straight overhead, still with an orange glow to it but no streak. Was scanning the northern horizon and then saw it about 75 degrees above the western horizon, slightly to the north. It was moving FAST, and we probably saw it until it was about 60 degrees above the eastern horizon. Probably around 20 seconds from acquisition until it got lost in the pre-dawn light.”

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See what you all missed??!! Derek said he tried to take a video but it didn’t turn out.

Addendum: It was brought to my attention that Spaceweather.com has an incredible movie taken by Dirk Ewers in Germany of Discovery heading towards landing that shows a “flare” as the sunlight suddenly hits the shuttle. Take a look!

Plus, Miles O’Brien wins the award for having all the latest tech at his disposals, as he watches the shuttle landing on his iPhone while in an airplane. And obviously he has another recording device with him, as well. It’s a hoot, watch it.

Discovery on course for landing on April 20, 2010. Credit: Alan Walters (awaltersphoto.com) for Universe Today

Above is Universe Today photographer Alan Walter’s shot of Discovery on approach. And yes, that is a bird under the shuttle, but Alan says it is somewhat of an optical illusion, though. The bird is about a hundred yards away and the shuttle was still about three miles away.

You can also see a mashup of Discovery images from Tomas Vorobjov over at the SciBuff website.

Here’s one more from Jen:

Almost There -- Discovery's landing on April 20,2010. Credit: Jen Scheer

And here’s NASA photographer Bill Ingall’s nice shot of the landing:

Discovery's landing on April 20, 2010. Credit: NASA/ Bill Ingalls

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/