What a fine way to envision the distance, Chuck. Thanks, Joe --- On Tue, 3/8/11, Chuck Hards <chuck.hards@gmail.com> wrote:
From: Chuck Hards <chuck.hards@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Last two chances to see Discovery on orbit To: "Utah Astronomy" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Date: Tuesday, March 8, 2011, 7:37 AM That's a good way of visualizing just how expansive even our little solar system is. Cruising at orbital velocity, the shuttle could have gone to the sun and halfway back to earth over the course of an entire year. It takes a beam of light about 12 minutes to cover the same distance.
Thanks for that post, Patrick. I may try and spot it this evening, schedule permitting.
On 3/7/11, Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> wrote:
Since its first launch in 1984 Discovery has flown 39 times, more than any other shuttle. When it lands Wednesday it will have spent a total of 365 days in space and traveled over 238 million kilometers, or just over one and one half times the distance from the Earth to the Sun.
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