Posts Tagged Discovery

Our Strange Sky: Above Hungary, Time Lapse of Discovery Separating from the ISS

Posted by mistergroonk in Photography, Space on March 10, 2011

“What’s happening here?” you ask. “Why is this so important?”

What you’re seeing below is a time lapse of the Space Shuttle Discovery separating from the International Space Station in the sky over Lake Bakonybél in Hungary. Being city(ish) bound it is rare we get to see the majesty of a non-light polluted sky. Any time something humans made is visible from the ground we can’t help but to smile and dream of a time we’ll be able to fly our own rocket ship to the moon and beyond.

Check out a video of these sequence below the jump.

Along with stars setting in the west, the two bright celestial beacons, Moon above and Jupiter below, leave short trails in this well-planned time exposure, a composite of 54 individual frames each 4 seconds long. On its final flight, the Space Shuttle Discovery and International Space Station form the second close pairing in the night skyscape. Still glinting in the sunlight in low Earth orbit, they gracefully trace overlapping arcs from lower right to upper left. Moon, Jupiter, Discovery, and ISS are reflected in the calm waters of Lake Bakonybél, Hungary.

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Good Morning, Discovery Astronauts. William Shatner Greeted Your Final Day

Posted by mistergroonk in Space on March 8, 2011

Yesterday, the Discovery astronauts were awakened by the sultry voice of an old school Star trek icon. No. it wasn’t George Takei. The captain of the 60s and lover of green women, William Shatner, greeted the crew with altered copy from his fame making TV series.

“Space, the final frontier. These have been the voyages of the Space Shuttle Discovery,” said Shatner in a specially recorded introduction to the “Theme from Star Trek,” played as wake-up music at 2:23am (0723 GMT).

“Her 30 year mission: To seek out new science. To build new outposts. To bring nations together on the final frontier. To boldly go, and do, what no spacecraft has done before,” said Shatner, who played Captain Kirk in the popular television and movie series

The space shuttle Discovery is set for retirement after this voyage. It makes the Space Bastard in us bittersweet.

You can hear and download the raw Air-to-Ground transmissions from the entire STS-133 mission at the NASA audio collection on Archive.org.

Drop below the cut to hear the entire wake-up playlist for STS 133.

Pointy ears should play close attention to track 5 (March 4, 2011).
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