Yesterday I took some photos of Endeavour’s last flight while getting some left seat time in a Cessna 180.
Endeavour was on its way to being a museum piece in Southern California and flew over Tucson at an altitude of 1,500 feet at the request of Captain Mark Kelly to honor his wife, former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Captain Kelly flew the shuttle on its last mission in 2011. The specially modified 747 used to carry the shuttles is called, unsurprisingly, the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. This particular aircraft is N905NA, a former American Airlines 747-100.
I’ll show the photos as well as describe how I took them and some other thoughts – feel free to just look at the photos if that’s your thing.
At about 8000 feet above the ground (to clear class C airspace with some room to maneuver) while talking to Tucson Approach, it was harder than I thought to spot a 747 with a space shuttle on its back. I had shot a few test frames of the city to make sure I had the shutter speed, ISO, and aperture at appropriate settings, and also to test focus – I was using a 200mm manual focus lens with my Pentax K-5. Although the camera still told me when I was “focused” with the manual lens, it was hard to hold the camera steady on a moving target.
I initially spotted the 747 as it passed near downtown Tucson. My first shots didn’t capture the aircraft perfectly, so I went to a slightly higher ISO and a faster shutter speed. I also tweaked aperture slightly.
It was easier to get good shots from the flat side window than the curved plexiglas windshield, so we paralleled the 747 as it flew north along Interstate 10. Needless to say, a 747 is faster than a Cessna 180 (even in a fairly steep descent), so I didn’t have a whole lot of time to mess with camera settings or check the way my photos looked. I did check one photo to make sure that I wasn’t getting everything horribly wrong, then fired away in short bursts. Even shooting RAW+JPEG, I was able to take a ton of shots and never hit the buffer (I love my K-01 for video, but the K-5 is better for still images).
Although I was focused on taking pictures at the time, I later thought about how much I would miss having America dominate the world in terms of missions to space.
As soon as the SCA pilots started climbing out, we had little chance of keeping up with them. We watched the 747 and shuttle disappear into the distance and continued on with the rest of our flight.
Most things do not excite me, but seeing a Space Shuttle on the occasion of its very last flight through the air is something I am very glad I was able to see. At some point, I’ll go visit Endeavor at its museum and take some close up photos.
Awesome! Really nice photos Andrew.
Great pics. Nice work. And thank you for including the explanation for your camera settings.
But given that we just landed a nuclear powered robot on Mars, I think we still dominate the world in terms of exploring space.
The space shuttle, in the opinion of many, was kind of a dead end.
It typically brought about 50,000 pounds of cargo into LEO or Low Earth Orbit, which is the very upper limit of the atmosphere and depending on how nitpicky you want to be, might not qualify as ‘space.’ 50,000lbs is also far less than the system it replaced, the Saturn 5, which could bring 260,000lbs into LEO.
Now that it’s retired, maybe we can invest in a system that will bring more cargo higher up that gives us a lot more options.
The Space Elevator!
L5: City in @#&@ Space!!!!!!
Superawesome!
I used to think my photos from the right seat of a 152 of a pair of Strike Eagles doing a formation takeoff from Dobbins AFB were pretty cool…
That was really nice of them to re-paint the Space Shuttle Transporter with “Vuurwapenblog.com” on the fuselage.
You must have mad pull at NASA. 🙂
That’s wonderful, getting to witness a very historical moment as it happens.
Thanks for sharing with us.
Seeing pics of that have always been really cool. Having had the wherewithal to plan for and take your own pics (from above, no less), is pretty damned awesome. I really wish I could have seen it in person…
As for the US leading the space race, it’s depressing that we specifically reduced the priority of the things that inspire us to dream, like putting a man on Mars. Yes, we put a rover up there, but it’s no where as inspirational as the thought of a man, like you or me, standing there and looking back towards earth with Old Glory in his hand…
I’ve been reading your site for a while, but you’ve inspired me to register and post… Great pics.
The morning that Atlantis landed on her last space flight, and the shuttle program’s last flight, I was bringing a section of helicopters up the intercoastal on a Log run for a detachment we were doing. As I’ve done several times, I asked the Shuttle Landing Facility’s tower if we could fly over the runway. Usually they would let me, but I wasn’t sure if they would this time since it was only a couple of hours after her landing. To my surprise (since Atlantis was still sitting out there), they gave us permission. This was just as they were beginning to tow her back to the building, so I ended up being right on top of them and getting a couple of pictures of the last shuttle being towed to the assembly building for the last time.
I just wish I had had my SLR with me. Unfortunately, all I had to snap the pictures was my iPhone.
Do you have to get special permission to fly within pitchertakin’ distance of the shuttle shuttle or do regular flight rules apply (whatever they might be).
No, just regular airspace restrictions and common sense (747 wake turbulence is very dangerous).
So were you flying the airplane with your knees while you took the pics? I thought texting while driving was bad! jk
Next question. How do we get /our/ name on an SCA?
Very cool! But I wouldn’t worry about America’s dominance in space. We’ll be back. It’ll be interesting to see what non – government run space projects will look like.
Whoa!!! Very nice capture Andrew!
Thanks Bryan!
I got to see it fly over Houston, but didn’t have the presents of mind to have a camera with me.
Thanks for posting these.
Wow, thanks for the pics from the aerial view! I’ve loved the shuttle program since I was about 4 or 5. My mom use to wake me up at the wee hours to watch a launch on TV. I’ve always got goose bumps watching a launch. I was shocked when the Challenger exploded…and I was again heartbroken when Colombia met it’s fate. I DVR’d the final service mission to the HST (the Hubble is another one of my favorite things…WOW….the images of supernova remnants, that are thousands of years old by the time the light reaches us?!??!!!) and watched the launch and the spacewalks to service the Hubble with the same kind of childlike enthusiasm and fervor I did when I was a kid….but with much more understanding of the grandiosity of it all. I’m saddened by the end of the shuttle program….I can only hope, something greater awaits future pioneers…..but I fear, with the direction of the recent administration, that could be hampered indefinitely.