The Shuttle is Flying!

[Roger]

I got on just in time to see the big welcoming party. (Or it might have been a replay; it's hard to tell sometimes.) The room? Science wing? Main Entrance? (All of the above?) where the connection gets made gets very crowded with (I lost count) eight or nine people going thru. But a 10'x10' pit space is still smaller, though you can't float overhead to get to the other side. It looks like the astronaut's bags are already packed in front ready to go. And some party balloons in the corner.

One bit of trivia I heard this morning: The "mission" start and stop dates have an official position in the schedule. Not when the Shuttle attaches. Not when they greet each other, nothing like that. It's when the seat for the astronaut that comes up to stay is placed in the Souyez emergency capsule. Then the mission number changes.

The map shows them now flying off the east coast of the US, then down thru Europe. Next pass (around 9pm here in Walpole -- maybe) is right on the east coast of the US, then mid-US. Everybody go out and wave this evening when they fly over! (You can see them as a bright moving star.)

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata...ngs/index.html

I hesitate to give you this website. It's very confusing. They had an old one that had a nice interface that would search for just the ISS. This one seems to search for every satellite. I'm not even sure if it's a 9pm flyover for the ISS or something else.

Regarding the music wake-up call. I suspect it's a NASA tradition since Gemini days. No room for an alarm clock back then.