Space Shuttle Endeavour’s Final Flight as Seen From Space

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The Space Shuttle Endeavour’s final flight last week was likely one of the most photographed plane flights in history. Riding piggyback on a specially adapted Boeing 747, Endeavour’s farewell tour took it from Kennedy Space Center in Florida to Los Angeles International Airport, cruising over cities including New Orleans, Houston and San Francisco along the way, creating photo ops everywhere it went for professionals and amateurs alike.

The flight was even captured by Digital Globe’s satellite as it flew over White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico in the image above that was highlighted today on Google Earth Blog. This great image is an interesting, almost sad reversal of the photos we are used to seeing of the shuttle heading away from Earth toward space.

The odd blue “shadow” beneath the planes is not a shadow, but a discoloration. Google Earth Blog has this explanation from Digital Globe: “In this image, the color offset of the aircraft occurs when a fast moving object is imaged by the satellite as the panchromatic image is collecting just slightly before the color image of the same location. When the image is merged together to make a color high resolution image, there is a slight offset on fast moving objects.”

The planes’ real shadow can be seen in the image below. Google Earth Blog also has a .kml file with the shuttle image that you can download and view in Google Earth

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/09/endeavour-seen-from-space/