This morning the last shuttle to ever fly in outer space has landed, concluding an era in American history. I took a whole bunch of pictures while at NASA, even one of myself at the Flight Director's desk in Mission Control. There are a few Mission Controls, one in Florida where the shuttle launches and lands, and one in Houston, for when the shuttle is in space. And yet another Mission Control just for the International Space Station.
Mission Control is where people on Earth, especially in Houston, help the astronauts with tasks and scientific experiments. For example, Aunt Molly's friend Tifanie writes what are called "trajectories" for the robotic arm on the space station. Basically, the United States is working with many different nations around the world to build the International Space Station. A big robotic arm on the outside of the space station takes parts, carried by the space shuttle, and puts those parts together with the astronauts helping out. That's how NASA and other similar agencies around the world work together, in peace and harmony, to do space construction! It's funny to think we now work so closely with our former enemies, like Russia, to build things in outer space. I guess in space, everyone gets along, no star wars in this universe!
Over time and many, many years the International Space Station has slowly been built. It serves as a home and scientific lab in outer space for astronauts and none of it could have been possible without the space shuttles.
Mission Control is where people on Earth, especially in Houston, help the astronauts with tasks and scientific experiments. For example, Aunt Molly's friend Tifanie writes what are called "trajectories" for the robotic arm on the space station. Basically, the United States is working with many different nations around the world to build the International Space Station. A big robotic arm on the outside of the space station takes parts, carried by the space shuttle, and puts those parts together with the astronauts helping out. That's how NASA and other similar agencies around the world work together, in peace and harmony, to do space construction! It's funny to think we now work so closely with our former enemies, like Russia, to build things in outer space. I guess in space, everyone gets along, no star wars in this universe!
Over time and many, many years the International Space Station has slowly been built. It serves as a home and scientific lab in outer space for astronauts and none of it could have been possible without the space shuttles.
Space Station Mission Control. They work around the clock here because there are always astronauts in space.
Mission Control for the Space Shuttle. I got to sit at the Flight Director's desk!
Aunt Molly's friend Tifanie traveled to Florida to watch the last launch. This is the Space Shuttle Atlantis and it's flight crew.
This is a picture of Tifanie who is a flight controller. She was the lead designer on this last mission, writing trajectories for the robotic arm.
This shows how the robotic arm works. The shuttle opens up and docks (attaches itself) and the arm reaches from the space station to take the parts brought by the shuttle.
After the robotic arm grabs the parts, it attaches them to the space station with the help of the astronauts.
Here you can see how, over the years, the space station has grown. Pretty cool!
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