Space Shuttle Atlantis

Image credit: NASA/Ken Thornsley

Angelita H. Cuevas

It was last Saturday morning here in the Philippines ( Friday night in the USA) when I watched a live video coverage of the Space Shuttle Atlantis roars into the sky to the International Space Station on mission STS-117. It was an amazing sight. Wow! Thanks a lot to John, special friend from Nevada. He was the one who sent the NASA link to me and I was really glad he did. Though I waited for almost 3 hours until the shuttle liftoff, but it was worth the wait. I thought NASA would fail since they had some problems and even delayed for another 45 minutes. I even saw some fish on the lake and also a seagull doing its intermission number while there no activity. It was a big bird. Congratulations to the astronauts who were on board on that ship! My salute to you guys!

“The shuttle is delivering a new segment to the starboard side of the International Space Station's backbone, known as the truss. Three spacewalks are planned to install the S3/S4 truss segment, deploy a set of solar arrays and prepare them for operation. STS-117 is the 118th space shuttle flight, the 21st flight to the station, the 28th flight for Atlantis and the first of four flights planned for 2007.” NASA