Endeavour, Discovery, Atlantis

I love the space program and will be sad to see the Space Shuttle missions come to an end. When I lived in California you could hear the space shuttle entering earth's orbit with two sonic booms. The cool thing about this is that a vehicle has to be going faster than the speed of light to create a sonic boom.

"All aircraft generate two cones, at the nose and at the tail. They are usually of similar strength and the time interval between the two as they reach the ground is primarily dependent on the size of the aircraft and its altitude. Most people on the ground cannot distinguish between the two and they are usually heard as a single sonic boom. Sonic booms created by vehicles the size and mass of the space shuttle are very distinguishable and two distinct booms are easily heard."

If you really want to get all geeked out check out this link: http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html

"It’s certainly earned its retirement. Discovery has flown more missions than any other shuttle – more than any other spacecraft, in fact. After 38 missions to date, and more than 5,600 trips around the Earth, Discovery has carried satellites such as the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit and sent the Ulysses robotic probe on its way to the Sun. It was the first shuttle to rendezvous with the Russian Mir Space Station, and it delivered the Japanese Kibo laboratory to the International Space Station."

Discovery has had its last mission and has gone to The Smithsonian. I love that they flew it piggy-back on a 747…ah in style! Endeavour just launched today on a 16 day mission and the last will be Atlantis, it goes up in July.

The toy shuttle is mine from the early 80's purchased at one of the space shuttle landing at Edwards air force base out in the desert.