See Space Shuttle Discovery Land

Tomorrow morning, Monday, April 19th, Space Shuttle Discovery is scheduled to land at Kennedy Space Center, ending its penultimate mission. The whole shuttle program is scheduled to end with this year.

In a fortuitous twist of fate, the landing path it will hopefully take travels VERY near the KC/St. Joseph area. I highly recommend you try to catch it. I'll help. If you're going to be in St. Joseph tomorrow morning, just meet me in the Benton High School parking lot by 7:30 am. But don't be late. I'll probably be standing in the bed of my truck, looking for a better view. Here's what it looked like according to a photographer in Houston in 1999:


N.B.: Everything below should be prefaced with "I hope." All of this only happens if they choose to GO with the De-Orbit Burn (DOB) at 6:43 am. I'll tweet whether they do or don't. If they don't, never mind everything. They very well might not, because weather at the KSC Shuttle Landing Facility is not currently forecasted to be favorable. That said...

If the DOB happens, here's what we would see in St. Joseph (where I'll be). At 7:31 and 10 seconds in the morning, it should just be coming into view at 331 degrees (Northwest), elevation 10 degrees above the horizon, 206 miles away. At closest approach at 7:32:11, you'll see it at 66 degrees (ENE), 33 degrees above the horizon (90 is straight up), at a distance of 69 miles.

In Space Shuttle terms, that's close enough to reach out and touch. By the time it disappears in the SE, it will have been in our view up to 4 minutes, though it may only be visible for part of that. At this point in its travel, it should be dragging a pretty spectacular plasma trail across the sky. Again, no guarantees; it's forecast to be cloudy overnight here, clear tomorrow. Will it be clear by 7:30 am? God only knows.

KANSAS CITY: Almost the same. Elevation will only reach 25 degrees for you guys, though, which should still be very visible.

COLUMBIA/JEFF CITY: Get out of bed, Harrison. From Jeff City, highest elevation will be 71 degrees (it'll feel like it's right overhead) and distance of 39 miles. I envy you. Start looking at 7:30:23 to the NW. When it leaves, it'll be 7:36:01 to the SW.

Want to figure it out for yourself? Here's the site I use. I can help you with it, just E-mail me at gier.michael@gmail.com or hit me on Twitter.

In case you're still wondering, N.B. stands for "nota bene" and is Latin for "note well" or "please note." It's really common in Europe.