Ok, the preparations are underway atm. The astronauts are just arrived to the scene and will soon board the shuttle.

Just over 2hrs to launch.

See it live in www.nasa.gov :up:

oooh, I almost forgot. Thanks for the update. :sunny:

Actually the launch should happen in about 2hrs-20min, if all goes well.

The clock you see counting down doesn't actually tell you when launch occurs because there wil be a few scheduled holds during the process.

Aye, the countdown doesn't figure in many built in holds like fredbass said. These are times when they have "go, no go" run downs of all systems, switch computer's to launch configuration, and etc.

Here's a direct link to the feed if anyone is interested:

http://www.nasa.gov/55644main_NASATV_Windows.asx

The countdown clock is at:

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/3...untdownto9.png

The launch is in 5 minutes.

Godspeed!

That was AWE INSPIRING!!! I have NEVER seen something so awesome in my life. I was on the phone with my dad trying to describe it all (he saw the apollo missions and the saturn V launches when he was in highschool in person so I think he knows what its like) after I got back to my house a few minutes ago. I got kinda choked up.

I wanna go!

EDIT: I'll post some screenies later as soon as I can get them on disc and transfered to my comp.

I went out my front door but I guess there were a few clouds between here and there and I couldn't see it, darn.

Im up in northern DE, and I was lucky enough to see it! :rock::up:

I'm tempted to take my camera to wal-mart right now, just to show you what it was like. I might still do that but heres a text description. I'll get some up tomorrow at the latest.

I was with a guy with a short-wave radio and nasa broadcasts it's launch activites over a frequeny we were tuned to.

The countdown started and when it reached the end. The whole and I mean the WHOLE southern sky lit up. It went from pitch black night to sunrise in a blink of an eye. When it first cleared the trees on the river it looked like a fiery sun coming up over the world. It went higher and higher, the jet of flame, going through one cloud after the other. We were sorta facing down the intercoastal river in Daytona (we were in a park) and as it went through the clouds you could see the water reflecting it all, as it went through the clouds. The shadow of the clouds would race across the water as the shuttle passed through them. It angled to the right and flew up and up, growing fainter. You could then see the boosters seperating from the main engine/shuttle, you could see the faint glow of them trailing behind the speck of light that was the shuttle and its engines. Soon after that, a few seconds, the shuttle became a shooting star, racing across the sky, until finally that too faded away.

Everyone cheered and clapped after it was all over. Was great to see the younger kids and quite a few of the teenagers and quite a few girls watching it with their parents or with their friends/relations saying how great that was or how awesome it was. Makes me extremely glad to see that some of those kids may some day carry on the space program because of what they saw tonight.

I'm never going to forget seeing that.

No kidding. I watched it through the TV but it was quite impressive nonetheless. Looked like a giant fireball going up. The main engines firing up followed by the rocket boosters and the huge amount of smoke, what a show!

Thankfully everything went fine. For me it was over in minutes. For the passengers it must've felt like hours.

Congratulations to everyone involved. :up: I await their safe return.

Alright heres one of those pictures I promised. Unfortunatly, as I have discovered to late, my brother, who begged me to be the one to take pictures, is the worst photographer on the earth... period. This is the best I could find out of what he took, it doesn't do the scene justice. But is fairly impressive I say, it gives a good idea of how bright it was.

Place of Photo: Riverside Park, Daytona Beach
Time: Approx. 8:50pm ET
Facing: South
Distance from launch: 50 miles / 80 kilometers

http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/9...lesmalluf6.jpg

The shuttle has just docked with the ISS. They will be spending 7 days aboard the station.

http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/8...dockingfs6.png