STS-127 Made History with its Launch July 15 and Landing July 31, 2009!

I encourage all members to one day visit Kennedy Space Center, as I did with members of my family in mid-May, mid-June and finally in July for 2 days. Endeavour looked majestic sitting on the shuttle launch pad. The entire mission was outstanding. And when Cdr. Mark Polanski, Pilot Doug Hurley, Mission Specialist Dr. Dave Wolf and the rest of the STS-127 crew landed safely on July 31, I thought to myself, "even though my Florida viewing attempts were unsuccessful, I felt like a part of it all. I would gladly try it again for Discovery in August - if only my work didn't get in the way!" **************************************************************************************** All told, I experienced 4 viewing "scrubs" in Florida (out of the 6 total launch attempts) : June 13 and 17 which were scrubbed due to a mysteriously persistent hydrogen/solvent leak; and the most recent attempts, quickly curtailed by raging thunderstorms in July--one of which, even struck the pad on Fri., July 10, causing ground crew to postpone refueling (for additional safety checks) from July 11 to 12; then, storms persisted in the area -- towering cumulonimbus, less than 11 miles away, with lightning hitting the ground. *************************************************************************************** Space Shuttle Endeavour has begun the process of delivering the exposed facility of Japan's Kibo laboratory to the International Space Station. Dave has conducted yet another spacewalk, such that his total EVA flight hours rank him as 14th out of all astronauts/cosmonauts -- for all time. To put this into perspective, Chris Cassidy (former Navy Seal and rookie for this mission) is credited with being the 500th person EVER to fly in space, so Dave is 14th out of 500 possible. Even more unique in our estimation, Dave reached out to our group, submitting the appropriate paperwork to take one of our one-of-a-kind Lilly Aviation Club logo patches--along with other Indianapolis memorabilia--on this trip with him into space! *************************************************************************************** Here is the source for more hot-off-the-press updates regarding the next mission's status, including live RSS feeds, etc.: http://www.nasa.gov ***************************************************************************************