It’s not looking like I’m going to ever see a space shuttle launch live. I barely saw the launch today. I happened to see a tweet pop up 3 minutes before Discovery launched — final launch of Discovery. While, it’s not the final launch of any shuttle the program is winding down. There are two more launches I believe: space shuttle Endeavour on or after April 19th and space shutttle Atlantis on or after June 28th.
Once when we were in Florida, we drove down toward Kennedy Space Center to check out the launch, but it got scrubbed due to weather. I doubt we’ll make it down to Florida for either of the remaining dates. *sniff*
I took a series of screen captures from NASA TV during the Discovery launch, and may post those later if anyone’s interested. I did see some debris tumble down between the shuttle and the external fuel tank a few minutes before the orbiter reached orbit, but hopefully that was inconsequential.
See the up-to-date launch schedule on NASA’s web site.