Behind the Scenes

The Shuttle Atlantis is landing early tomorrow morning. And while I'm SURE that they decided to end the Shuttle program on my birthday, other people I know are expressing skepticism.

I thought I'd share a few behind the scenes photos of what happens before and after a Shuttle launch. There are a bunch of early mornings like the one you see above. We often have to be out at the NASA press center before dawn so that the security and bomb-sniffing dogs can go through all our gear before we take it into secure areas.

There were a number of astronauts and dignitaries that stopped by the NASA-Tweetup tent to talk to that group. Whenever I had a moment I was stopping by to see who was speaking.

As the Atlantis Crew drove by in their special NASA transport van everyone rushed to the fence to wish them well-

I always have a great time partying with the Twitter crowd. Just like the last launch there was a monster multi-day party dubbed 'Endless BBQ' at one house.

Many of those same people came out to see the booster rockets as they were hauled back into Port Canaveral after the launch.

I thought I'd give you one more great shot of the launch taken by another Sony camera from a different angle.

And you simply HAVE to check this out- Jook is one of the team members of The Last Shuttle Project, and he is a wiz at creating awesome 360-VR images.  He was allowed into the Shuttle Discovery cockpit with Rhonda. I don't know if this will work on Ipad or Iphone, so please check it out on your computer-
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360 VR of Discovery
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