CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – On Thursday night, nature and NASA will collaborate on a painting that will use the skies over the Eastern seaboard as a cosmic canvas. The materials are a nearly full moon, the stars and a streaking space shuttle.
There are countless engineering and safety calculations behind Thursday’s scheduled 9:35 p.m. blastoff, the first night launch in four years. But once the shuttle Discovery’s three main engines light, it’s all about the wow factor.
Past viewers of the spectacle have reported seeing the shuttle’s fiery track as far north as Nova Scotia and as far west as Tampa. It also can be seen on television. But for pure grandeur, you’ve just got to be there.
Take it from former astronaut Jay Apt.
“In some ways, it’s sort of like an eclipse in reverse,” Apt said. “It turns night into day. The birds wake up, not just because of the sound. You feel the heat wave.”
When Apt describes the view from inside the shuttle, his voice rises in excitement and his words come faster.
“It just adds one notch to what has to be the greatest aesthetic experience anywhere,” he said. “The experience of launching at night, every sense in your body is happy. It’s incredible. It’s wonderful.”
You don’t have to be strapped in the rocket to appreciate it, though.
The shuttle launches in a northeasterly directly from Cape Canaveral, a bit east of the U.S. coastline, shutting its engines off and reaching orbit due east of northern Maine or Newfoundland, according to NASA. Depending on weather and lighting conditions, residents of the U.S. East Coast should be able to see some of the shuttle’s fiery streak.
Late Tuesday, the weather forecast for the launch worsened slightly to only a 60 percent chance of favorable weather. The problem: lingering low clouds.
NASA also wrestled with two late-breaking technical concerns that showed up Tuesday, but managers weren’t sure whether they could delay the start of the mission.
The launch still was scheduled for Thursday night.
The first problem dealt with a power surge that shot through one of the space shuttle’s power systems during preparations overnight, although key elements such as the external tank, the solid rocket boosters and the main engines probably weren’t affected, said LeRoy Cain, launch integration manager.
The second concern was with an adhesive on the reusable solid rocket motor, which may have failed a test.
“We’re probably not going to have any issues, but we want the teams to go off and assess that everything is OK,” Cain said. “If there is anything we need to retest or check out more so than what we otherwise would do … we want to talk about that.”
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