How to see a Space Shuttle landing
Including an up-close-and-personal photo op
Note: a summary of how to do this is at the bottom of this post
On November 16th, the space shuttle Atlantis and her crew launched into space on the STS-129 mission. We already had plans to drive down to Florida for a family get-together in November, but not soon enough to see the launch. I did hope, though, to see the landing around 12 days later.
Shown at right is a typical shuttle entry into Florida. They fire the deorbit engines about an hour prior to targeted landing time, while over the Indian Ocean, descend into the atmosphere, and transition from an orbital vehicle into a glider. You can see here the long left and right turns they do over Florida as they complete their approach; at this point they are still very supersonic, going Mach 5 or so.
We were in Florida already, but a good 120 miles south of Kennedy Space Center. We left Palm Beach in the morning, heading north towards KSC, but I knew we wouldn't get there in time for the landing if NASA managers decided to take the first landing opportunity (instead of a second opp about 90 minutes later, by which time we would be at KSC). So during the drive up I monitored the status via web (mobile phone), and early in our drive I knew that they had indeed taken the first opportunity. So I monitored the entry status as we drove, and 5 minutes before I expected it to be in view overhead, we pulled over at a rest stop (in Valkaria FL) and started scanning the skies. The skies were crystal clear and we had the sun at our back, so I knew we'd see it, and two minutes later we spotted it! A bright white spot, like an airplane, extremely high up and moving extremely fast -- at that point it would have been going Mach 3 or so and at an altitude of 80,000 feet. (I forgot to take a picture, but it was really just a white dot moving fast.)
Even at closest approach we were still 25-30 miles cross range from the groundtrack (and it was another 15 miles up!) so I wasn't sure if we were going to hear the sonic boom. That is the main prize of a landing, besides actually seeing it fly over. And we heard it -- a clear double boom! By the time we heard it, the shuttle was waaaaay past us, practically at the north horizon, so you can envision a loooong cone being dragged behind it, representing the sonic boom, like the image at left.
It wasn't loud, and honestly I actually only heard one of the two booms because I was talking, but Sharon heard both.
So there's my data point: during a shuttle landing, at 25-30 miles cross range from the groundtrack you can still hear the sonic boom. I don't know how high up the shuttle can be and still make an audible boom down at the ground. 120,000 feet? 200,000 feet? I asked around online and didn't get an answer.
To the right is a visualization (using Google Earth) of the actual path that the shuttle took coming in. The view is from south Florida looking north.
So with the shuttle now out of sight below the tree line, we listened via local news radio to the final minutes of the shuttle mission as it touched down on the KSC runway and rolled out ("Houston, Atlantis, wheels stop"). Got back in the car and completed our drive up to KSC, where I planned to spend a day seeing whatever I could. I had a press badge so I knew I'd at least be able to get into the press area, and if lucky I'd get onto a press bus to be able to watch the shuttle get towed back to its OPF building.
Or so I hoped. I arrived at KSC and found that it was now too late for me to pick up my press badge, which I'd reserved two months ago. NASA's like, uh, the shuttle's landed and you're showing up to pick up your badge now? So I sadly turned tail and went to the Visitors Center, the tourist complex that the public can go to, and figured I'd get some things at the gift shop and call it a day.
By the time I'd gotten there though, I'd formulated a new plan. Take one of the public tour buses and see if I can get myself to the right place at the right time and get some photos of the shuttle being towed as we drove by in our bus. At left is the area in question (from Google Earth); the shuttle lands on the airstrip in the distance in the upper left of the picture, then gets towed back towards the processing buildings, which are near the base of the huge Vehicle Assembly Building you see in the foreground.
The trick was going to be picking the right bus tour and timing my departure.
I knew that one of the premium bus tours takes you to the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF), the runway that the shuttle lands on, so I naturally figured that would be the best option to get an up close view, even if the bus was prevented from actually going to the runway due to presence of shuttle. But that tour was sold out! So I just got the generic bus tour. But this would turn out to be a lucky move.
The generic bus tour leaves every 15-20 minutes and you can get on any bus, so I got on one and hoped for the best. This turned into a bit of drama because the line to get on the bus was very long and inserted some unneeded delays into my attempted careful timing. Anyway, got on the bus and got moving. Via mobile phone web browser I was keeping up with my fellow nerds who were tracking every move of Atlantis on the runway, waiting for her to get the long and slow tow back to the OPF.
And here is where I lucked out. The bus first goes to the "launch gantry", a tourist spot relatively close to the shuttle launch pads (LC-39A and LC-39B) where you can get take your time looking around and taking photos of things in the distance (like the panorama above). Critically, when you leave the launch gantry you don't have to get back on the same bus. They just have a constant stream of busses arriving and departing, taking folks to the next stop. So I now had another opportunity to time my departure to try to intercept the shuttle under tow.
Once I saw via mobile web that the shuttle had turned off the runway and onto the towway (seen at right in a screenshot from NASA TV at the time), I leapt into the next bus and grabbed a seat on the left side of the bus, knowing that that would be the side I'd need to be on as we drove past. And indeed, as soon as the bus got moving, the driver got on the PA and said he was hustling a bit because he know the shuttle was rolling and he was trying to get a view for us. A couple minutes later, as we approached the towway, we could see the tail of the shuttle poking above the trees! (The top of the shuttle's tail is nearly 60 feet high -- 5 stories) The driver slowed down as we drove past the moment of catching a good glimpse but said he wasn't allowed to stop. That's alright, I was madly snapping photos and was able to grab one good one, seen here. Again, so you understand the context, we were driving past and looking down a long road towards the landing strip, where the shuttle had landed and was now being towed back to its regular hangar.
So, all that was over in about 30 seconds and we continued another half mile or so to the Saturn building. This is another tourist stop, and really just as big an attraction as the main visitor's center where everyone starts their visit. There's a simulation of the Apollo control room during launch, a theater, countless exhibits, a restaurant and gift shop, all arrayed around a huge Saturn V rocket lying on its side. (see our 2007 visit for a representative photo of that) I stepped off the bus, chatted with the the driver about the possibility of getting another view of the shuttle being towed, and got right back on the bus. I didn't even go into the Saturn V center -- been there, done that, and someday perhaps I'll do it again but today I had a much better thing to do, go see a shuttle just hours back from space!
I got back on the bus, grabbed a seat near the front and on the right side. The bus pulled out of the Saturn V and we could immediately see the tip of the tail, now a good halfway down the towway. This would be a good photo as we drove by! We got closer to the intersection, the bus slowed, and then ...
The bus stopped.
We were fifth or so in a group of tour busses that were stopped at the side of the road, right at that intersection, waiting for the shuttle to pass by. The freaking space shuttle was going to parade its matte black ass right in front of my face.
To the right is an aerial photo from a mission a couple years ago showing what I had lucked into. If you look closely (click to enlarge), you'll see the shuttle being towed with the convoy of vehicles behind it. Just behind those, at the right edge of that picture, you can make out some more vehicles at the side of the road. Those are the tour busses, and I was in one of them.
It turns out that when they tow the shuttle back, about 30 minutes prior, they stop traffic on the road that it'll be rolling over and literally sweep that section of road clean. They run street cleaners or brooms or something and then walk it down (a mile or two) inspecting for any remaining debris. Seems expensive and excessive, right? Well, they are towing the shuttle back on its own wheels (way too hard to get it up on a dolly), and can you imagine what an operation it would be to have to change a tire on that beast if it had a blowout? It ends up being much easier and cheaper to instead just spend the money and time to clean and inspect the road just prior to rollover. Risk management.
After they do that surface inspection, though, nobody is allowed to drive on the road until the shuttle has rolled over it and reached the building it's going to. That meant stopping any southbound traffic, and so I had lucked into one of the most impossibly great photo opportunities imaginable that day.
The shuttle slowly rolled past and I practically hyperventilated as I took pictures as fast as the camera would go. The entire bus was crowded at the windows, snapping away, chattering excitedly.
(A week after this, I sent one of these photos to a friend at a certain major media organization, and she liked it so much that she twitter'd it -- here's the photo.)
After about 25 minutes of this, the shuttle had finally reached its destination and was off the road, meaning we could get moving again. As the bus started rolling down the road again, we drove by the shuttle one last time, which was now parked in front of the OPF waiting for entry, and I got a few final shots as we rolled past.
And that was it. The bus went back to the Visitor's Center and I was pretty much worn out. Oh wait, there's more! I wandered around the Visitor's Center deciding if I'd had enough and it might be time to call it a day, when I saw that there was something just starting in the presentation auditorium they have there. Story Musgrave was giving a slideshow on his photography and then doing a book signing. Musgrave is one of the most experienced astronauts ever, and quite a notorious character, so I stuck around for his presentation and then waited to get a picture taken with him and a signed copy of his book, a beautiful collection of T-38 photographs that he's taken over the years.
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So, now, I'd like to boil all this down to some tips for anyone else who would like to see the shuttle up close, after landing, like I was able to. First, note the timeline of what happened in my case:
9:45am -- landing in Florida
2:00pm -- first motion on the tow from the runway
3:00pm -- turn from runway onto towway
3:15pm -- first visible from parkway (rounding the bend)
3:30pm -- turn from towway onto parkway; ideal photo opportunity
3:45pm -- start turn from parkway onto ramp to OPF
3:50pm -- road clear, parkway traffic moving again
The 4 hours from landing to tow first motion is typical. In my case, the shuttle had landed heading northbound (runway 33) instead of southbound (runway 15), which put it at the far end of the runway at wheels stop. This added, by my estimate, 30 to 45 minutes to the processing time. So consider the landing direction when you try to time this, because if it's a sounthbound landing, then they might start towing only 3h15m or 3h30m after landing.
In general, the photo op I've written about above occurs around 5-6 hours after landing time. The tour busses only run during daylight hours, so this method is only going to work if the landing has occurred in the morning, as early as 4am or so and as late as 11am.
Keep up with the live status of the shuttle on the runway at www.NASASpaceFlight.com (aka NSF), in particular the NSF forums, where they have a live commentary thread for each mission day. You can also check the NASA TV screengrab (jpg still image) to see what's happening this instant. Use this information to time which bus you get onto at the Visitor's Center, and be conservative, in the sense of getting onto a bus too early rather than too late. You'll be getting onto a regular "free" tour bus, not any of the special tours.
Then when you get to the launch gantry stop, you can re-calibrate and get on the next bus at the right time, so that you see something as you drive past the towway heading north towards the Apollo / Saturn building.
Then when you get to the Apollo / Saturn building, you can re-calibrate and get on the next bus at the right time, so that you intentionally get stuck at the towway intersection after they've closed the road. As for the timing of that ... Based on my experience, including the fact that there were 4-5 busses in front of us at that intersection, I'd guess that they close the road at around the same time that the shuttle turns from the runway onto the towway, or maybe 10-15 minutes after that. So that is when you'd want to get on a bus at the Apollo / Saturn building, so you'd be first in line getting stuck and have the best photo op. I'd recommend that you get chummy with the bus driver and see if his radio tells him when they've closed the road, because that'll be the best info of all. As soon as they close the road, get on the bus!
Good luck!