Today is the tenth anniversary of the last launch of a space shuttle, Atlantis on STS-135. I remember watching the launch on NASA TV with my dad, and thinking that this was the end of an era. My dad said that he had watched the bookends of the Space Shuttle program: TV coverage of the first glide flight of the Enterprise in 1977, and then the final launch in 2011.
Earlier, in 2007, I made a trip down to Florida to watch another shuttle launch, Endeavour on STS-118. Here is my video of the launch, which I edited and uploaded shortly after shooting it. I watched the launch from Titusville, across the Indian River from Merritt Island and Kennedy Space Center. It wasn’t until the shuttle actually took off that I realized I had my camera trained on the wrong launch pad!
Endeavour now resides at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. The museum plans to display the orbiter in its configuration for the STS-118 mission, although the permanent display space has yet to be built.
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