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SAAA
San Antonio Astronomical Association
One of the largest astronomy clubs in the U.S.
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And away we go!
Manned Mars Exploration!
You will be surprised at just
how long they have been working on this project!

The banner is from a picture taken
from the Space Shuttle
while flying over the Pacific Ocean.
The white cloud formation is a
very well defined hurricane.

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Family Notes:

September 1997

If you missed any of the MIR docking in September, you missed a lot! This was a very exciting mission. We were able to view in San Antonio MIR/Shuttle orbital passes most nights. The day that the Shuttle left MIR was the best viewing. You could see the Shuttle passing over, and 40 seconds later, you saw MIR. 2 sightings for the price of one. NASA Select had wonderful coverage! Some of the live shots of the Shuttle as it was approaching MIR were spectacular! Even more spectacular were the close up shots of MIR itself from the Shuttle. It looked as though both the Russian Space Agency and NASA wanted a full look at the MIR space station. The routine fly around was awesome as well. You will be able to see these spectacular shots again in January! Hurry....call your cable company to get NASA select (or find a big satellite dish!)

STS-87

We were able to view a landing pass the morning it landed! 

Alarm clock went off at 5:30a.m., and we turned NASA select on TV to make sure they were landing on the first opportunity. Yesterday, we checked out ground tracks on the Shuttle/NASA web site. These show you the exact path the orbiter will take when 'coming home'. Because of a norther' blowing in, they had to alter their path a bit (to compensate), which brought their landing path a bit more south of us than we had anticipated.** We had wondered if we would even be able to see it. We are just south of San Antonio, not in the city lights, but rural, and on a hill as well. Bundled up with jackets over robes, we went outside just to see if there was a chance of a sighting. About 30 degrees above the horizon we saw her in full glory and fireball. What was even more interesting this time was that we could see a distinct change in her altitude as she passed over us. This is quite a treat for anyone to see! Now we mark this landing pass down as our 4th!  (We will be creating a page shortly to describe this awesome sighting and how you can spot the Shuttle during orbit passes and as she is landing!)

** Ok, a correction on why the landing path was changed! From Roger Balettie, former Flight Dynamics Officer for NASA: The change to the entry groundtracks on 87 were not driven by a "norther". The Entry FDO (good friend of mine!) decided to change the initial roll command due to a concern about the low crossrange and a final roll reversal velocity. Soooooo... that's what moved the groundtrack more to the south as it passed over Texas. The original plan was an initial roll to the left (north), but Gonzo changed it to right (south)! 
Thanks Roger! (he tries to keep us in line!)