Say Goodbye, Part Two

A lovely photo of Space Shuttle Atlantis on the pad at the Kennedy Space Center:

Image credit: Bill Ingalls/NASA

According to the caption at Astronomy Picture Of The Day, this was taken early yesterday morning, before the launch of the last Shuttle mission.

Meanwhile, here's the latest Shuttle mission news:

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 16:37:51 GMT

Starboard and port wing leading edge RCC survey inspections and nose cap inspections are complete. A camera inspection of the orbiter’s tiles will be conducted during Atlantis’ approach to the International Space Station on Sunday. Results will be reported at an upcoming Mission Management Team (MMT) meeting.

That came from NASA's main page. They've never been good about linking to articles like this, so I won't bother. Get to NASA's home page soon enough, and you might see it. Then again, you might not. The inspection it discusses is part of a routine inspection that was added as a part of all Shuttle missions after the Columbia disaster.

According to this NASA update, the Shuttle should be docking with the International Space Station sometime tomorrow (Sunday).

Click on the image credit link to see the caption, and then click on the picture there if you want the full sized version, which is really large. Clicking on the image here gets you a medium-sized image.