Up, up and away

The second-to-last Space Shuttle launch went off without a hitch this morning. Rep. Gabby Giffords was in attendance as her husband, Mark Kelly, commander of STS-134, and the rest of Endeavour‘s final crew rocketed into orbit. Spaceflight Now has complete coverage.

The most amazing view of the launch comes from Stephanie Gordon, a.k.a. @Stafmara, who tweeted this photo and this photo of the launch as seen from her airplane window, on a flight from New York to Palm Beach. Here’s a video she took:

Here are some more typical launch shots, Creative Commons-licensed pics from Flickr, by Lauren Mitchell (the two photos immediately below) and Robyn Pollman (far below).

I may get a chance to see the Shuttle myself on Memorial Day, May 30. If the flight plan doesn’t change, Endeavour will undock from the International Space Station at 9:53 PM MDT Sunday night, May 29. Roughly 7 1/2 hours later, from 4:19 to 4:26 AM Monday, the ISS will fly over Denver, with the Shuttle very close by. As I’ve said before: “Trust me: even if you’re not into dorky stuff like Iridium flares, this is well worth a trip outside at the proper time, if the sky is clear.” The sight of “two distinct, bright dots, moving briskly across the evening sky in tandem — two unmistakable beacons of the human presence in space” is “a really neat thing to see.” And this being the second-to-last chance ever to see them, I will totally get out of bed early on a holiday to watch them, if the schedule stays on course and the sky looks likely to be clear.

You can use Heavens-Above to check the specific viewing conditions for your location. If you’re in the U.S., just click hereand enter the name of your city or town, then select it from the resulting list of locales. (If you’re outside the U.S., select your country here and then follow the same steps.) On the screen that follows, click on “10 day predictions for: ISS.” First, check and see if you have any visible flyovers tomorrow evening, May 17 or early Wednesday morning, May 18, before docking at 4:15 AM MDT. (We don’t have any of those here in Denver.) Then, click “Next” up near the top right corner (to look at the next 10 days), and look for a morning flyover on May 30.

P.S. You can also look for flyovers at any other point during the mission, including when they’re docked together. But unless you have powerful binoculars, the ISS and Shuttle docked together just look like a single point of light, not distinct dots. So while you know intellectually that you’re looking at two distinct spacecrafts, you can’t actually tell. By contrast, when they’ve just undocked or are just about to dock, you can see it with your own eyes, and it’s awesome.

P.P.S. The final Shuttle mission, STS-135, flown by Atlantis, is scheduled to launch July 12. Who knows — we might be having a baby that day.